Fathers

1 Corinthians 13

Tap a verse to read the Fathers. Press and hold, then drag, to make a card.

If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but don’t have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but don’t have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud, doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil; doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will be done away with. Where there are various languages, they will cease. Where there is knowledge, it will be done away with. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now that I have become a man, I have put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I was also fully known. But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.

About · Privacy · Credits · Support VRSZ

What the Fathers say

1 Corinthians 13:6

Eastern Fathers

John Chrysostom

"Rejoiceth not in unrighteousness:" i.e., doth not feel pleasure over those that suffer ill: and not this only, but also, what is much greater, "rejoiceth with the truth." "She feels pleasure," saith he, "with them that are well spoken of," as Paul saith, "Rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep." Hence, she "envieth not," hence she "is not puffed up:" since in fact she accounts the good things of others her own. Seest thou how by degrees love makes her nursling an angel? …

Homily on 1 Corinthians 33 ↗

Basil of Caesarea

Cast off the sullenness of an angry man which you are evincing by your silence, and regain joy in your heart, peace toward your likeminded brothers and sisters, and zeal and solicitude for the preservation of the churches of the Lord.

Letter 65, TO ATARBIUS

Theophylact of Ohrid

That is, it does not rejoice when someone suffers injustice, experiences violence and insult. But, he says, what is far more important, he rejoices together with those who are in good repute, and counts it as his own glory when the truth prospers. This is against the envious.

Commentary on 1 Corinthians ↗

Western Saints

Thomas Aquinas

Secondly, charity excludes an inordinate love for evil; hence he says: it does not rejoice in wrong. For one who sins from passion commits sin with some remorse and sorrow, but one who sins from choice rejoices in the fact that he commits sin, as it says in Pr (2:14): "You rejoice in doing evil and delight in the perseverance of evil." But charity prevents this, inasmuch as it is the love of the supreme good, to Whom all sin is obnoxious. …

Commentary on 1 Corinthians ↗