Prayer · Scripture

1 Corinthians 13: Love Is Patient and Kind

The Way of Love

1 Corinthians 13 is Saint Paul’s chapter on love, written to a divided church to show that every gift is nothing without love.

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In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

This is First Corinthians chapter thirteen. The love chapter. Read at almost every wedding. Quoted on greeting cards. Cross-stitched on pillows. So familiar that we can stop hearing it.

Tonight, let me hear it.

Love is patient. Patient even when waiting hurts. Patient with the slow change in others. Patient with my own slow growth. Patient with God's timing.

Love is kind. Kind in small ways. Kind in big ways. Kind when no one is looking. Kind when the other person does not deserve it.

Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not seek its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

Lord, hold me up to this list. The mirror does not flatter me.

Love is not envious. I am envious sometimes. The colleague who got the promotion. The friend with the better marriage. The neighbor whose children seem to be doing better than mine.

Love is not boastful or arrogant. I am, sometimes. I want credit. I want to be seen as smart, capable, accomplished. The pride lies underneath even my service.

Love is not rude. I can be. The sharp word. The dismissive tone. The interrupted sentence.

Love does not seek its own way. I do, often. My preferences. My comfort. My agenda.

Love is not irritable or resentful. I get irritable. I hold resentments longer than I should. The list of grievances grows.

Love does not rejoice in wrongdoing. There is a hidden satisfaction sometimes when an enemy stumbles. That is not love.

It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Lord, this is impossible love. Not human love. Divine love. The love that comes from You and through You and back to You.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.

Love never ends. The only thing that survives. Faith and hope are wonderful, but they will be transformed in heaven, because we will see Him face to face. Love is what we already do in heaven. Love is what we will keep doing forever.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.

Now we see in a mirror, dimly. Now I see Your love only in glimpses. Then I will see fully. The face of love itself.

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

The greatest of these is love. Not because faith and hope are small. They are great too. But love is the greatest.

Lord, fill me with this love tonight. Not the human imitation. The real thing. The love that bears all, believes all, hopes all, endures all. The love that comes only from You.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Verses 4–7 read: “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.” (World English Bible, Catholic Edition.) The Church offers it as a wedding reading. Below: the whole chapter, what it means line by line, and a night meditation to pray it slowly.

Go deeper

1 Corinthians 13, the whole chapter

2 min readThirteen verses, in the World English Bible, Catholic Edition, the translation this site uses: 1If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

Thirteen verses, in the World English Bible, Catholic Edition, the translation this site uses:

1If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

2If 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.

3If 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.

4Love is patient and is kind. Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud,

5doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way, is not provoked, takes no account of evil;

6doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;

7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

8Love 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.

9For we know in part and we prophesy in part;

10but when that which is complete has come, then that which is partial will be done away with.

11When 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.

12For 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.

13But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.

— 1 Corinthians 13:1–13 (WEBC)

Older Catholic Bibles such as the Douay-Rheims say “charity” where newer ones say “love”: “Charity is patient, is kind.” Both translate the Greek agapē, which the Latin Vulgate renders caritas. It is not first a feeling. It is the love that wants the good of the other person, the love God has for us: “God is love” (1 John 4:8).

What 1 Corinthians 13:4–⁠7 means, line by line

2 min read“Love is patient and is kind.”

“Love is patient and is kind.”

The two words that open the list are the two that hold it up. Patience bears with the other person’s faults and slowness; kindness goes looking for a way to do them good. One waits, the other acts.

“Love doesn’t envy. Love doesn’t brag, is not proud.”

Envy is sad at someone else’s good; bragging and pride want our own good to be seen. Love is glad for the other person’s gifts and does not need to win.

“Doesn’t behave itself inappropriately, doesn’t seek its own way.”

Love has manners: it does not treat people roughly, and it does not insist that everything go its way.

“Is not provoked, takes no account of evil.”

Love is slow to anger and does not keep a record of wrongs to bring out later. This is where forgiveness lives, day to day.

“Doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth.”

Love takes no secret pleasure when someone fails, even an opponent. It is glad when what is true and right wins out.

“Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.”

It covers the other person’s faults instead of exposing them, trusts them before it suspects them, does not give up hope for them, and does not walk away when love becomes costly. That does not mean love believes every lie or puts up with abuse. Love wants the other person’s good, and getting yourself or your children to safety is not a failure of love.

Pope Francis gave a long passage of Amoris Laetitia (2016) to these verses, taking them phrase by phrase as a guide for love in marriage and family (nos. 90–⁠119).

Why Paul wrote it: a church divided over its gifts

1 min readPaul did not write this chapter for a wedding.

Paul did not write this chapter for a wedding. He wrote it to the church in Corinth, a gifted community that was quarreling over its gifts: who spoke in tongues, who prophesied, whose gift mattered most. Chapter 12 says that the Spirit gives every gift and that the Church is one body with many parts. It ends: “I show a most excellent way to you” (12:31). Chapter 13 is that way.

That is why the chapter opens with the gifts the Corinthians prized, tongues, prophecy, knowledge, even faith that moves mountains, and says that without love they are nothing. And it is why verses 8–12 say the gifts will pass: they belong to the time when “we see in a mirror, dimly”. Love does not pass. “Love never fails” (13:8).

1 Corinthians 13:13: faith, hope, and love

1 min read“But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.”

“But now faith, hope, and love remain—these three. The greatest of these is love.” The Church calls these three the theological virtues: they come from God, they lead to God, and they are given in Baptism (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1812–1813, 1266).

Why is love the greatest? Faith believes what it does not yet see, and hope waits for what it does not yet have. In heaven we will see God “face to face” (13:12), so faith gives way to sight and hope to possession. Love does not end there; it is what heaven is. The Catechism calls charity “the form of the virtues” (no. 1827).

Is 1 Corinthians 13 about marriage?

1 min read

Not first. Paul was writing to a whole church, not to a couple, and the love he describes is the love every Christian owes everyone. But it is also the love a husband and wife promise each other, and the Church offers 1 Corinthians 12:31–⁠13:8a among the New Testament readings for a Catholic wedding. Couples often choose it for that reason.

Read at a wedding, it is less a portrait of the couple than a list of what they are asking God for. For couples who want to pray it together, or anyone praying it alone for the one they married, there is a fourteen-night plan that takes the chapter a few words a night, and a prayer for your marriage.

A prayer from 1 Corinthians 13

1 min readShort enough to say at the end of the day.

Short enough to say at the end of the day. Pause where the words leave room and name the person you are thinking of.

Lord Jesus, you loved us first.

Make me patient and kind

with the people closest to me,

(name them)

and with the ones I find hard to love.

Where I have kept a record of wrongs,

teach me to let it go.

Where I wanted to win,

teach me to be glad for their good.

Give me a love that bears, believes,

hopes and endures,

your love, which never fails.

Amen.

The night meditation at the top of this page reads the whole chapter slowly and holds your own life up to Paul’s list.

Questions

What does 1 Corinthians 13:4–7 say?

“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.” (World English Bible, Catholic Edition.)

What does “love is patient” mean?

That love puts up with the slowness and faults of others without giving up on them. In the same verse Paul pairs it with kindness: patience bears with the other person, kindness goes out of its way to do them good.

Is 1 Corinthians 13 about marriage?

Paul wrote it to the whole church in Corinth, which was divided over spiritual gifts, so it is about the love every Christian owes everyone. The Church also offers it as a wedding reading, because it describes the love spouses promise each other.

What Catholic wedding reading says that love is patient?

1 Corinthians 12:31–13:8a, one of the New Testament readings in the Church’s Order of Celebrating Matrimony. It runs from “But earnestly desire the best gifts” (12:31) to “Love never fails” (13:8).

What does it mean that love does not rejoice in iniquity?

It is the older wording of 13:6 (Douay-Rheims and King James: “rejoiceth not in iniquity”); the World English Bible says “doesn’t rejoice in unrighteousness.” Love takes no pleasure in wrongdoing or in someone else’s fall, even an opponent’s; it rejoices when the truth wins.

What does 1 Corinthians 13:13 mean?

Faith, hope and love, the three theological virtues, remain; love is the greatest because faith will give way to seeing God and hope to having him, but love lasts forever.

Where is the love chapter in the Bible?

In Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, in the New Testament. It sits between his teaching on the gifts of the Spirit (chapter 12) and on tongues and prophecy (chapter 14).

To pray this chapter a few words a night, beside Sarah and Tobit from the Book of Tobit: 14 Nights of Love — a prayer plan in AngelGuard.

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