Paternoster rosary 4.2 - 1 Corinthians 13:6-7

The next reading follows on from the previous, being the second bit of the passage, made famous by its use in weddings, on love.

[Love] does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

As I pray this with the words "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us", I tend to do so in way similar to the previous passage: holding my life in company with those words and noticing what emerges. I think they are challenging in that they make uncomfortable reflection in the face of how we relate to those woh differ from us or oppose us. When we don't really like someone (take an easy case like a political leader) it is all too easy for us to experience schadenfreud (literally 'shame-joy'; a pleasure in the misfortune of others) if and when they do something wrong. However, we don't normally have this reaction when we love someone, when a loved-one 'falls', we experience disappointment, or embarrasment or shame arising from identification with them. From those core responses flow others like anger or sorrow. The delight in wrongdoing tells us that we we are not regarding that person with God's love and is a call to realign our attitudes with regard to that person. Rejoicing in the truth is also a test we can use. With those we love, we are delighted when they tell the truth. With those we oppose without love we are disappointed we don't have something on them or the chance to expose their duplicity. Love is about celebrating truth wherever it is found, even if it is uncongenial to us or our position on something.

The bearing, believing, hoping and enduring all things needs a littel care. It could be read to mandate that an abused person continues to be abused, for example. These characteristics are not to be read as absolutes, but as examples of what love may do. In the case of someone who suffers chronic abuse (for example), there comes a time when it should be recognised that to allow the abuser to continue in sin without challenge is not love but complicity in evil. How to act then is a hard thing to give general rules about best dealt with using the aid of a wise help-mate and with much prayer. The point of what Paul says here is that in situations of ordinary human disagreement, grumpiness and frailty, love acts with patience and by going the second mile in order to allow or even encourage the best and most loving from the other: it seeks to be part of the solution rather than augmenting the problem.

Usually I have found that situations when I haven't been reacting as part of the solution or where my reactions demonstrate that I am regarding someone or some others with hostility have come to mind in contemplating these words. That has been what is in mind as I pray the words of forgiveness.
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