1 Corinthians 12:27–13:8 · Luke 16:19–31
Love Never Ends: The Highest Step
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,
Today the Church places two great passages side by side. In the Gospel we hear of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus. In the Epistle St Paul sings his hymn to love. And we honour Saints Cosmas and Damian, the holy Unmercenaries. All three show what love does when it meets someone in need.
Our Lord tells of a rich man who “feasted sumptuously every day” (Luke 16:19), while at his gate lay Lazarus, “full of sores” (Luke 16:20), longing for the crumbs from his table.
Notice something. The rich man never strikes Lazarus or says a cruel word to him. He simply does not see him. Lazarus lies at the gate every day, and every day the rich man walks past.
Notice the names too. The rich man has no name in this story, but the poor man does. In the world’s eyes it was the other way round. Yet God knows Lazarus by name. His name means “God has helped.”
When both men die, Abraham tells the rich man, “between us and you a great chasm has been fixed” (Luke 16:26). That chasm did not appear suddenly at death. The rich man had been building it for years, beginning at his own gate. In the next life he simply found the gap he had made in this one.
St John Chrysostom preached many times on this parable. He said, “Not to enable the poor to share in our goods is to steal from them and deprive them of life. The goods we possess are not ours, but theirs” (On Lazarus, Homily 2). These are hard words. But they are also words of freedom. What we have was given to us so that it can be given again.
Here St Paul helps us. He writes, “If I give away all I have … but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:3). So giving alone is not the whole story. Love goes deeper. “Love is patient and kind … Love does not insist on its own way” (1 Corinthians 13:4–5). Love sees the person at the gate. It notices, and it stops, and it does not ask what it will get back.
St John Climacus, the abbot of Sinai, describes the spiritual life as a ladder of thirty steps. Love is the last and highest step. It stands above prayer, above stillness, and even above freedom from the passions. St John opens that final step with St Paul’s words, “But the greatest of these is love,” and he gives the reason: love is “the very name of God himself.” He writes, “Love, by nature, is a resemblance to God, insofar as this is humanly possible.” So when we love, we begin to look like God. And this love has no ceiling. St John says that in this life and in the age to come “we will never cease to progress in it” (The Ladder of Divine Ascent, Step 30).
What kind of love is this? It is not love that looks for something in return. The rich man may well have loved the friends at his table. They could invite him back. Lazarus could give him nothing. The love at the top of the ladder gives to the one who cannot repay. Earlier in this same Gospel, Christ says, “when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you” (Luke 14:13–14). This is how God loves us. We have nothing to give Him that is not already His, and still He gives us everything, even His own life on the Cross.
Saints Cosmas and Damian lived this love. They were brothers and doctors who healed the sick and took no money for it. That is why the Church calls them the Unmercenaries. They took to heart Christ’s words, “You received without pay, give without pay” (Matthew 10:8). They saw each sick person as Lazarus at the gate, and in each one they saw Christ.
Today’s Epistle begins with these words: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27). We have just received the Body of Christ from this chalice. The same Christ who comes to us in Holy Communion also lies at our gate. He comes as the stranger, the sick and the lonely, the one we pass so often without seeing. The rich man’s gate was only a few steps from his table.
Abraham said that even one rising from the dead would not persuade those who will not listen. But One has risen from the dead. He stands among us today, and His love is the love St Paul describes: “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends” (1 Corinthians 13:7–8).