Chapter 14 begins just after the 12:20 mark in the podcast

In looking at this podcast, we remember that in chapter 12, St. Paul discussed spiritual gifts and how all spiritual gifts are offered by the Holy Spirit for the benefit of the Church. We should not be jealous of other’s gifts and we should not take pride in any gifts we may have. Here in Chapter 13, he pauses to discuss love. He seems to be pausing because he is aware of all the issues in Corinth and he wants to emphasize the importance of LOVE before returning to his discussion of gifts because without LOVE the rest of the discussion does not matter.

St. Paul returns to discussing spiritual gifts in Chapter 14. So far he has compared all the spiritual gifts to a body and that all are necessary; he discussed some specific spiritual gifts and then in chapter 13 he discussed that the love that unites and bonds as a community is more important than any spiritual gift. In this chapter he returns to spiritual gifts, specifically speaking in tongues. This comes up, in part because as was mentioned when we discussed chapter 12, the Corinthians took great pride in this particular gift and would boast about it with others. Additionally, this is the chapter where St. Paul mentions that women should be silent in church. Of course, when we get to that point in the chapter we will discuss these verses, which are actually part of a larger section where St. Paul is discussing order/structure in the church.