August, a month for weddings! Many couples choose the sunny month of August to celebrate the happiest day of their lives. For many, the so-called ‘Song of Love’ (1 Cor 13:1–3) is the wedding text par excellence, for it is precisely these words of the Apostle Paul from his letter to the Corinthians that contain so much power and so much truth that they get under your skin and straight into your heart. It is a text by a lover who is existentially, with every fibre of his being, gripped by this feeling of love. Here speaks someone who knows what it means
 

to know nothing, yet to understand everything; someone who says nothing, yet is able to say everything; someone who knows what it means to lose everything, yet to gain everything; someone who has no strength, yet can move mountains – because he loves.

Expressiveness, knowledge, faith, possessions – all these are ‘strong’ – but only on one condition. For love alone is decisive. Without love, all this is ‘nothing’.

It is a text written by a devout Christian and passed on to friends in a letter: the so-called Apostle Paul to a congregation in Corinth, in what is now Greece.

The Song of Songs is a poem about love – not in verse or with rhyme,

but with profound thoughts. Here is someone who is convinced of the matter, namely of love. It reads like a definition of love. He is convinced that it is worth writing, reading and hearing about.

Towards the end, we hear of many qualities of love which, I believe, are described in a particularly striking way.

I’ll highlight two key statements: firstly, ‘Love is not easily angered; it does not keep a record of wrongs’; and secondly, ‘Love is patient and kind; it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud’.

What does that mean?

Firstly: Love finds the strength to forgive, the strength for a new beginning. It takes the first step towards reconciliation. It always stands on the side of peace.

And: Love works on self-perception, self-understanding and self-expression. Love is the place and the moment in which and through which people realise that they can only say ‘I’ if they can also say, think and feel ‘you’ and ‘we’.
The two belong together: the ability to deal with conflict and a willingness to reconcile cannot exist without the strength of the ‘I’, without addressing the ‘you’ and without a sense of ‘we’. It is love, precisely, that creates this connection. And it is within marriage that this is tested anew every single day. Every relationship demands the ‘we’; at times, the ‘I’ too. But we must also keep in mind what the ‘you’ can be.

Jesus calls us to love, using an analogy: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15:12). The love that Jesus proclaimed, he himself experienced: ‘As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Remain in my love!’ (John 15:9) It is linked to a call to ‘remain in love’. The Apostle Paul described how this can be achieved.

Aleksandra Brand