Living with Faith, Hope and Love
Feminine they may be, Faith, Hope and Love,
the graces that bring fragrance,
a supernatural bouquet.
Patiently persisting
with all three coming along
while prejudice, hatred, and more
the destructives are dismissed.
Forgiving, forgetting past negatives,
faith looks back to what was good
and hope sees a better future ahead.
Love covers all with a desire to live fully
in fields of green, where the flowers
can keep on growing beautifully.
-- Karp Zolotaryov
St. Paul founded the Christian church in Corinth before spending three years in Ephesus. Between ca. 53–57 he wrote his First Epistle to the Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians 13 [New International Version] he wrote, "If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship [some manuscripts say "body to the flames"] that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." The King James version of the last sentence has the familiar "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." Faith, Hope and Charity (Fides, Spes et Caritas in Latin, or Pistis, Elpis, and Agape in Greek) were personified as martyred saints, the daughters of Wisdom (Sapientia or Sophia). The cult is ancient, and their names are found not only in the various early martyrologies of the Western Church, but also in the Menaia and Menologies, the service-book used in the Eastern Orthodox Church which include all the variable parts of the services connected with the commemoration of saints. It is unclear whether they consisted of one or two groups; the Latin group does not indicate their relationship but were buried on the Via Appia, at some unspecified time, while the Greek group were buried on the Aurelian Way during the reign of Roman emperor Publius Aelius Traianus Hadrianus ("Hadrian," 117-138). In Finland their names are associated with Christmas decorations and symbolized by a cross, an anchor, and a heart.
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