Tuesday, December 12, 2023 Feast of Our Lady of Guadeloupe (sorry about yesterday, the camera wasn't working but let's hope it works today)In this second iteration of faith, hope, and love to the Thessalonians, Paul regarded faith and love as our breastplate. A breastplate defends the heart, the source of faith and love. Hope is a helmet, armor which protects the head. Hope of salvation is the intellectual core of our redemption-God's promise of what we will be. To know faith, hope, and love is to know mercy, for to know them is to know the Father and his love. The God who creates and saves out of love, the God who allows the creature a real share in his love through faith, and the God who thus gives the person an infinite horizon of hope beyond suffering and death is the God who is rightly named Mercy. With regard to the other statement, the abiding of faith, hope, charity, that, too, has been misapprehended as if it indicated that faith and hope belonged to this state of things only, and that love was the greatest of the three, because it was permanent.
The three things Paul saw are familiar to many Christians: faith, hope, and love. First, Paul was thankful because of their faith in Christ Jesus. They heard the word of the gospel and in response they put their faith in Jesus. They had a real relationship of trusting love in Him.
leej5Rf.