Today’s Readings – Wednesday of Week 24 of Ordinary Time - First Reading

Commentary on 1 Corinthians 12:31—13:13

In today’s First Reading, we have likely one of the most quoted passages from Paul—if not from the whole Bible. We have seen Paul speaking to the Corinthian Christians about the various gifts of the Spirit with which different people are endowed so that they can better serve the needs of the community in many different ways. He had been criticising them for laying too much emphasis on and even desiring to have the more prestigious gifts. Using the analogy of the human body he had said that the overall unity of the community was more important than any one gift, just as the unity of the body depended on its having a full complement of limbs and organs for it to function properly.

Today, however, he goes further and says that, above an … Continue

Yesterday’s Readings – Saint Robert Bellarmine SJ, Bishop and Doctor

Robert Bellarmine was born on 4 October, 1542, at Montepulciano in Tuscany, Italy, to a noble, but impoverished family and was a nephew of Pope Marcellus II. As a boy he knew Virgil by heart and became adept at writing Latin verse. One of his hymns, on Mary Magdalene, is in the Breviary. H … Continue