Tag Archives: C.S. Lewis

If I Speak With the Tongues of Angels But Have Not Love

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In addition to the Eucharist, Christians would meet for banquets known as “agapes” or “love feasts” in order to eat, pray, and share their goods together. This is a fresco of a female figure holding a chalice at an early Christian Agape feast, depicted in the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome. Perhaps the woman with the cup is the personification of Agape-Love herself. The Patriarch Job is often called the Long-Suffering because of his many afflictions; he shown wearing a crown because he is described as a king in the oldest manuscripts of the Book of Job.


If I speak in the tongues of humans or even of angels, and do not have love, I have become sounding brass rather than a resounding cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy … and do not love, I am good for nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-2)

This chapter is a digression in the apostle’s instructions to the Corinthians, but it has become one of the most recognizable chapters in the New Testament. Chapters 12 and 14 of the epistle are about the Church but Chapter 13 is about the essential quality of Christian life: agape, translated simply as “love” is the clearest expression of Christian faith and practice.

St. Paul mentions angels a few times in this epistle (chapters 4, 6, and 11) but this is the only place where he refers to “the tongues of angels.” Perhaps he is thinking of the Testament of Job (written between 100 BC-100 AD), in which the daughters of Job are given the ability of ecstatic speech to make up for their not being allowed to inherit their father’s property on an equal footing with their brothers. The ecstatic speech of the daughters is described as the language of angels and cherubim.

Paul chooses speaking in tongues as his example because the Corinthians thought that it was the greatest of the gifts…. The tongues of angels are those perceived by the mind, not by the ear.

Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians

But this ecstatic speech is useless without love. Even prophecy, which St. Paul had earlier said was truly the greatest of the gifts, is useless without love.

Balaam prophesied even though he was not a prophet (Numbers 22-24). Even his donkey prophesied…. King Saul prophesied but was filled with an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16, 19).

Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles

Love is not just a quality of Christian life. Love is what is natural to divinity.

Since true charity loves all, if someone knows that he hates even one other person he should hasten to vomit up this bitter gall, in order to be ready to receive the sweetness of charity [Christ] himself.

St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 23.4

Many people have heard that there are four different words in Greek that are commonly all translated by the English word “love.” C.S. Lewis wrote a well-known book about these words, known as The Four Loves.

Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God & The Visitation

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A 17th-century Russian icon of the Deposition of the Sash of the Mother of God.

July 2 has long been a feast day of the Mother of God in both the Eastern and Western Churches although the feasts each had a somewhat different emphasis.

According to legend, the Mother of God died and was buried by the apostles in a tomb in Jerusalem. Three days later, Thomas the Apostle, who had been delayed and unable to attend the funeral, arrived and asked to have one last look at the Virgin Mary. When he and the other apostles arrived at Mary’s Tomb, they found that her body was missing. According to some accounts, the Virgin Mary appeared at that time and gave her belt (also called sash or cincture) to the Apostle Thomas. Another version of the story recounts how the Mother of God gave her sash to one of the women tending her as she was dying and the sash was passed down in that woman’s family from generation to generation.

Traditionally, the sash was reportedly made by the Virgin Mary herself, out of camel hair. Whether it was given to St. Thomas or the woman tending the dying Virgin, the sash was kept at Jerusalem for many years. It was brought to Constantinople in the 5th century, together with the robe of the Virgin Mary. The robe and the sash were both deposited in the Church of St. Mary at Blachernae. The sash was embroidered with gold thread by the Empress Zoe, the wife of Emperor Leo VI, in gratitude for a miraculous cure. The anniversary of this deposition of the sash of the Mother of God at Blachernae is celebrated every year by the Orthodox Church on July 2.

Later, the Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos (1347–1355) donated the sash to the monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos, where it remains to this day. (I was given a relic of the sash on Mt. Athos by a good friend of mine; I highly prize it. I have also been given a small stone from Golgotha by a parishioner and a small stone from the tomb of the Mother of God in Jerusalem as an ordination gift.)

July 2 was the traditional date for the Western Church to celebrate the Visitation of the Mother of God and St. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1:39-57). Feeling the presence of his Christ in the womb of Mary, John, in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, jumped with excitement. Elizabeth greeted her cousin Mary as “the Mother of my Lord,” realizing that the baby was not just kicking in her womb for no reason. (Many western Christians moved the Visitation feast to May 31 in 1969.) Keeping the Visitation on July 2, however, strikes me as a fitting way to promote unity between Eastern and Western Christians and to foster goodwill among the adherents of a common, “mere” Christianity.

Read more about the Visitation here and here. You can read more about the Deposition here. See Mere Christianity here.

A contemporary icon depicting the Mother of God giving her sash to St. Thomas the Apostle after her Dormition (Assumption).

Napoleon of Notting Hill

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G.K. Chesterton published “The Napoleon of Notting Hill” in 1904.

Picture a London in the future where democracy is dead. A little government minister with virtually no experience governing is made King. The boroughs are suddenly declared separate kingdoms with their own city guard, banner and gathering cry and the capital is plunged into a strange type medieval warfare. Then Notting Hill declares its independence?

When G.K. Chesterton wrote his classic Napoleon of Notting Hill in 1904, the Russo-Japanese War was just beginning and the first ever New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square was held. Edward VII sat on the British throne. But it is a book surprisingly relevant to the contemporary world. The book revolves around loyalty to the local and taking our neighbors seriously; it is an early demonstration of the axiom, “Think globally, act locally!” But this loyalty to our neighborhood is far from the cries of “America first!” that involve turning our back on the rest of the world. It is our loyalty to our neighborhood that forces us to realize our interdependence on the rest of the world and how each neighborhood needs the others if any are to flourish. Need a good book this summer? Pick up this one!

Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday is credited with inspiring the conversion of C.S. Lewis to Christianity and Michael Collins to the cause of the Irish Republic. It also was one of Neil Gaiman’s inspirations for Neverwhere.