As St. Paul in his beautiful and well-known letter to the Corinthians said, that even if we possess all the knowledge, power, and gifts of this world, but we have no love -- then we have nothing. Somehow, reading the Gospel for today, I started thinking about what St. Paul said. It is because in the eyes of God, all our prayers and religious practices are meaningless if we don’t turn them into love -- into love of others. There are some who come to church who pray often, receive the sacraments, but still lack in love. They would even judge others in the church. Where is love? Our prayers and religious practices must lead us to love. Otherwise, they are useless. This is what Jesus meant quoting the prophet Isaiah: “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” We need to be careful not to become like ‘this people’ that honor God only with the lips, but without love.
