This is what St. Paul describes as "a more excellent way," the way of mutual love, based on our love of Christ. Before he lays aside his pen in this wonderful chapter he cannot resist the urge to indicate the end to which this more excellent way advances.
Our knowledge of divine things in this world is imperfect and circumscribed. It is like the knowledge possessed by a small child, or it resembles that which we obtain through a glass, darkly. "Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known." In this life I know by faith, believing on God's word what I cannot see or understand, except in part. But in heaven there will be no room for this virtue of faith. In heaven I shall know and see God "face to face" in the same manner as on earth I see and recognize the face of a friend.
Divine hope also ends with death. If I save my soul, I now possess all I ever hoped for, with the fullest assurance that no power on earth or in hell can defraud me of my possession. If I have the misfortune to lose my soul, all hope ends too, because hell is the home of despair. "Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here." I
"Now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity." That has been his thesis all through the chapter, but now he reaches the climax of his argument. Unlike faith and, unlike hope, charity continues right in and all through eternity. Heaven is the home of union and love each soul loving each other soul, and all souls together united in pouring themselves out in a mighty act of love of God.
For this the "great commandment" is the preparation. The truer my love of my neighbour here, the deeper and the more satisfying my love of God hereafter. "Love shows itself by deeds rather than by words." "How will this love be acquired?" asks St. Teresa. "By our resolving to work and to suffer and by our doing so whenever occasion offers.... The soul's profit consists, not in thinking much but in loving much. … Oh, the charity of those who truly love. ... How little rest they are able to take if they see that they can do anything to help even one soul to make progress and love God better, or to give it some comfort or save it from some danger! Even if they can do nothing for others by their actions, they can do a great deal by means of prayer, importuning the Lord for the many souls, the thought of whose ruin causes them such grief. They lose their own comfort and look upon it as well lost, because they are not thinking of their own pleasure but of how better to do the Lord's Will.... It would be a terrible thing if God were to be telling us plainly to go about His business in some way and we would not do it, but stood looking at Him because that gave us greater pleasure. . . ."
She goes on to describe someone she knew who "for almost fifteen years was kept so busy by obedience in various offices and positions of authority that he could not remember in all that time having had a single day to himself, though he did everything he could to set aside certain periods of the day for prayer and to keep his conscience pure.... The Lord has amply compensated him for it, so that, without knowing how, he has found himself in possession of that spiritual freedom so much valued and desired by all, which belongs to the perfect, and in which is found all the happiness to be desired in this life ......
Such teaching, from the mystic and contemplative of Carmel, is comforting food for those of us who imagine that the many calls on our time should be an obstacle to a life of prayer. St. Paul's heavenly doctrine on charity disposes of the objection that those who are "busy about many things" may not preserve, in the midst of many tasks, a heart that turns all the time towards the eternal Lover, as the flower turns towards the sun.