Quinquagesima: "Charity" Sunday

Quinquagesima features one of my favorite Epistles, for all that it's always been a difficult one for me to read out loud. It starts off simple enough, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass..." and winds up with the well-known "And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." (I quite agree with Fr. Daniel's sermon: the modern translations that change "charity" into the catchall English word "love" miss the point, or hide it amongst the other meanings the latter word adds.)

But a little study, more than I have put on it in the past, starting last evening shows it to be in sections: "If I have not charity (I have nothing)," then "Charity is/is not", then the "Charity never faileth, other things will because they are incomplete ('in part') to be replaced by the perfect (complete)," then to the ending. And that provided a guide to emphasis when reading so that hopefully it was understood by the congregation this morning.

"Charity" seemed to show up everywhere this morning: in the prayer before procession, the Collect, the Epistle and Fr. Daniel's sermon. Or maybe I was just more sensitive to it.