Love Divine: Meditations for the Advent, Christmas, and New Year SeasonSample

"Second Sunday of Advent: Love is Not Irritable"

Most of us tend to think of irritability as a natural response to life’s little frustrations. We also tend not to worry too much about our irritability, although some Christians may perhaps be wise enough to make it a matter for prayer. 

We should take our irritability much more seriously, because it is the very opposite of love. First Corinthians 13:5 says that love “is not irritable.” Irritability is the antithesis of charity. It is not merely a way of complaining, therefore, but actually a way of hating. 

This is the first time we have considered one of Paul’s definitions for love that is drawn from its opposite. Sometimes Paul defines love according to what it is, and sometimes according to what it is not—resulting in greater clarity. 

The term Paul uses for irritability—paroxunetai—has a range of translations, including “easily provoked”;  “easily angered”;  “quick-tempered”;  and “cantankerous.”  We could add other synonyms. Love is not grumpy or grouchy. Love does not get ticked off. Love does not verbally abuse, give people the silent treatment, or go off on a tirade. 

Presumably the Corinthians were guilty of some or all of these sins. We have the same struggle. Like the Corinthians, we are living in a fallen world full of fallen people, including people who irritate us, annoy us, and make us angry. 

When Paul spoke about irritability, he may well have meant to include out-and-out anger. But irritability is anger’s trigger finger—what Lewis Smedes calls “a spiritual readiness to get angry.”  With the help of the Savior whose incarnation we celebrate this season, we can learn to address the first rise of anger in our hearts, and help point others toward Jesus Christ, the Love Divine. 

How can we better guard ourselves against irritability, anger’s “trigger finger”?