“Maior autem est caritas”: the hymn of charity, Cornelius and Cyprian, and Mary standing

By Prof. Dr. Daniel C. Afonso · Updated 18 October 2026

Nunc autem manet fides, spes, caritas, tria haec, maior autem ex his est caritas. […] Et iustificata est sapientia ab omnibus filiis suis.
1 Cor 13:13 and Lk 7:35

The Wednesday of the Twenty-Fourth Week in Ordinary Time gives the Church the hymn of charity and, immediately afterward, the portrait of a generation that accepts nothing. Paul shows that without charity all the gifts are emptied out, and that charity is the only thing that survives the passing of what is imperfect. Jesus compares His contemporaries to children in the marketplace who refuse to dance when the flute is played and to weep when laments are sung. On this day the Church also commemorates Saints Cornelius and Cyprian, a pope and a bishop of the third century who paid with their lives for the communion they sought to preserve.

I. The First Reading: 1 Cor 12:31; 13:1-13

Chapter 13 is not a stray poem; it is the heart of a discussion about charisms. Corinth was arguing over hierarchies of gifts, and Paul announces “a way of perfection that surpasses everything” (12:31). Then the demolition begins, three times in a row and always with the same structure: tongues of men and of angels, prophecy and knowledge of all mysteries, the giving away of one’s goods and of one’s own body. In each case the conclusion is the same, “if I do not have charity, I am nothing” (v. 2).

The description follows, and in it there is not a single word about feelings. Charity appears in fifteen verbs that are all behaviors, “is patient, is kind, is not envious, is not haughty” (v. 4), and the list ends in four absolutes that describe endurance, “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (v. 7). Only afterward comes the reason for its primacy: prophecy, tongues, and knowledge come to an end, “but charity never ends” (v. 8). It is the only virtue that passes through death without changing its nature, because in heaven one no longer believes or hopes; one loves. That is why Paul ends where he ends: “the greatest of all is charity” (v. 13).

II. The Gospel: Lk 7:31-35

The parable of the children in the marketplace is short and cruel. One group proposes a wedding game and plays the flute, and the others do not dance. It then proposes a funeral game and sings laments, and the others do not weep. Nothing works, because the refusal was not in the proposal; it was in those who received it.

Jesus applies it with two examples that cancel each other out. John the Baptist came in austerity, neither eating nor drinking, and they said he had a demon. The Son of Man came in closeness, eating and drinking, and they said He was “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (v. 34). The two extremes were condemned by the same tribunal, which proves that the criterion was not the behavior of the one sent but the prior decision not to adhere. And the final sentence shifts everything: “Wisdom is justified by all her children” (v. 35). The Wisdom of God does not defend herself with arguments. She is justified by the children she begets.

III. Cornelius, Cyprian, and the Price of Communion

Today’s memorial fits these readings without forcing anything. Cornelius was pope between 251 and 253, at a time when the Church was divided over what to do with those who had given way during the persecution of Decius. Some wanted to readmit them without penance; others wanted to close the door to them forever. Cornelius chose the more costly path, which was that of forgiveness with penance, and he had against him the rigorism of Novatian. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, supported him. Both died for the faith, Cornelius in exile and Cyprian beheaded in 258.

What binds them to the readings is precisely the accusation of the marketplace. The rigorist said they were lax. The laxist said they were harsh. Neither of the two was looking at the criterion, which was the charity that builds up communion. Cyprian left it written that whoever does not have the Church for a mother cannot have God for a Father (CYPRIAN. De unitate Ecclesiae, 6), and that sentence cost him his life, because the unity he defended was not an administrative preference but the very effect of the charity of which Paul speaks.

IV. Mary, the Charity That Remains

If charity is the only thing that does not end, then it is worth asking where it was seen whole. The answer of the tradition is well known, and it is not rhetorical. The Council states that Mary faithfully preserved her union with her Son unto the Cross, where she stood, and that there she suffered deeply with her Only-Begotten, associating herself with a maternal heart with His sacrifice (LG 58).

Let Paul’s description now be read with that scene before one’s eyes. “Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” is the most precise list of what happened at the cross. There is no spectacular gift there, no prophecy, no tongue of angels. There is a woman standing who does not withdraw. That is why the Church can recognize in her its own type in the order of faith, of charity, and of perfect union with Christ (LG 63), and the order in which the three terms appear is not a matter of indifference.

As for Wisdom justified by her children, there is a Marian reading that the liturgy has authorized for centuries, by applying to Mary the sapiential texts of the Old Testament. The Wisdom of God did not convince the generation of the marketplace, which had a ready answer for austerity and for closeness. She justified herself by begetting children, and the first of them, in the order of the flesh and in the order of faith, was born of Mary. Whoever wants to know whether Wisdom is right should not look for the decisive argument. He should look at those she has begotten.

The Wednesday of the Twenty-Fourth Week therefore leaves a warning for those who argue a great deal about the faith. It is possible to have the right argument against the rigorist and against the laxist, and to be merely one more child sitting in the marketplace. What remains is not being right. It is charity.