The 12 days of Christmas serve as a type of "veiled Catechism" during a time of religious persecution. The song we sing is full of symbols.
Today we're looking at Three French Hens.
On the third day of Christmas
My true love gave to me
Three French Hens,
Two Turtle Doves,
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree.
We already noted that the True Love is God.
The Partridge is Jesus because of his willingness to be a sacrifice.
The two turtle doves represent the covenants of the Old and the New Testaments
NOW...a Partridge in a pear tree?
The key is the three part of the French Hens.
It represents the virtues of the Gospel: Faith, Hope and Love.
Faith is the "substance", the real thing so to speak, of what we believe.
Hope sustains us in times when things don't seem well.
Love is the crowning of all virtues and when first applied to our relationship to God, it should spill over into our relationship with all others.
1
Corinthians 13:4-13 (NRSV)
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant
5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;
6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.
11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
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