Preface: This is kind of just a bit of rambling of something that recently happened and I'm not good at evangelizing but I pray that anyone who reads this version of the cited scripture will be impacted as I was....
A few weeks ago I went to confession and my penance was one I had been given a few times. My confessor is a sweet 82 year old priest who I just figured forgot that he's given me that as penance a time or two...or five. This confession was different though. This confession marked the year anniversary of a hard time in my marriage, my fertility, my husband's life, and my life.
Rewind to 2013: The morning of our friend Brian's funeral I took a pregnancy test and it was positive. Quelle coïncidence! What a beautiful circle of life! We lay to rest one life and welcome another! Unfortunately days later we were saddened to find out it was a false positive and I'd rather not go into the reason for that, but needless to say it was a very dark time in our marriage. Aaron had a very hard time dealing with all of this and was in a lot of pain emotionally and physically (he had just had surgery the day after Brian's death). I went to confession with our priest and it turned into an ugly cry fest for about two hours, yelled at God, yelled at Brian, yelled about my husband, yelled about every thing possible and followed up with Father James praying over me and leading me to find comfort and solace in Our Blessed Mother. Thank God for Her!
Fast-forward to a few weeks ago: So as I'm wrapping up this confession, Father James sits in silence and prayer and finally speaks "It's really quite beautiful to see where you are now from where you were a year ago around this time." How did he remember this?! Why did he remember this?! I thought priests were supposed to just hit the Confession Reset Button and not remember those embarrassing confessions!!!! However, it was nice to hear that he had seen some sort of spiritual growth in me. So anyway, he then moved on to my penance... the penance that I had already done... several times. "Read First Corinthians chapter 13 five times." What?! Five Times?!?! I didn't even do anything that bad! I had no mortal sins! This was more so for graces! This chapter is engrained into my mind and my home! I have pictures frames with passages from this chapter! This chapter was read at my wedding!!! I know this chapter!!! Ugh. Five times. Okay. Fine. Five times. I smiled and nodded and said 'okay'. He said he felt there was something I needed to understand in that passage. Five times. Seriously?
The first night I started my penance I was too lazy to get my Bible out so I just pulled up my Bible app on my phone. I began to read and to my surprise I seriously did understand something I had never understood. You see, the King James Version, New International Version, and all the other versions have this version:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
(you all know it)
The Catholic Public Domain Version that I was reading said this...
Charity is patient, is kind. Charity does not envy, does not act wrongly, is not inflated.
Charity is not ambitious, does not seek for itself, is not provoked to anger, devises no evil.
Charity does not rejoice over iniquity, but rejoices in truth. Charity suffers all, believes all, hopes all, endures all.
Charity. This hit me like a ton of bricks. Well played God, well played. All this time I've sort of correlated 1 Corinthians 13 with my marriage because it's so often read at weddings. It made sense to. These have kind of been rules for a happy marriage. However, this time it didn't just hit me as a wife, it hit me as a Christian woman. So may times I've had discussions with my dear friend about being uncharitable with words, actions, thoughts and us working hard to not be uncharitable. This scripture made me realize that it's not enough to be uncharitable: I need to be charitable. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines charity as "benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity" and generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering; also : aid given to those in need". How often do I do this? How often do I feel the need to do this? I tell you, its not of much as it should be.
So, my goal for now is to be more charitable as a Christian to humanity. Not just my husband.
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