“When the most holy Virgin was born, the whole world was made radiant,” says the Liturgy of the Hours for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin. “Sun of Justice, the Virgin was born before you as dawn comes before the day… blessed is the branch and blessed the stem which bore the holy fruit.”

The Birthday of the Blessed Virgin, which the church celebrates on September 8, takes on tremendous significance when seen through the lens of God’s eternal plan. It also lends exquisite meaning to the feast day of the Most Holy Name of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which quickly follows on September 12. Both of these days of celebration draw our attention to the early life of Mary, before Her participation in Jesus’ earthly existence.

Before Mary conceived Christ in her womb, she had conceived Him in her heart, said St. Augustine. Before Our Lady wrapped her first-born in swaddling clothes, she had already embraced the Messiah with her will, her intellect, and her nature. Before she followed His way of passion and stood below His bloody cross, she had freely immolated herself before God for the sake of the coming Messiah. Before she rejoiced in His resurrection, she had dedicated her life to His glory and victory. Before knowing the immediacy of His coming–and before comprehending her own role as His Mother–she had already unreservedly offered herself to God for His divine purposes.

This understanding of her “fullness of grace” prepares us to comprehend Mary’s unqualified “fiat” to God’s angelic messenger when invited to be the Mother of God. God had been preparing the soil of her soul since her creation. she herself, through her goodness and love freely given, had tilled it and made it ready for seed.

How was such a creature formed? By the express will of the Blessed Trinity, to act as an appropriate vessel, an ark, a tabernacle for the coming of the Messiah. “God took more care in the formation of this most pure body than in the creation of the heavens and the entire universe,” wrote Venerable Mary of Agreda (1602-1665) in “The Mystical City of God ,” the saint’s revelations of the ineffable mysteries of the life of Mary.

“The Mystical City of God ,” in which Ven. Mary of Agreda records revelations of the life of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is not to be placed on a par with Holy Scripture, which does not record Mary’s birth. Nor are the faithful obligated to believe in its contents. However, the Catholic Church has a long tradition of reading and contemplating the private revelations of the saints, provided they do not contradict church teaching. Such reading, when accompanied by the Church’s Imprimatur (official declaration that a work is free from error in matters of doctrine and morals) can serve to increase our love and understanding of God.

The early church’s traditions surrounding Mary’s birth were founded in such written accounts as the Protoevangelium of James, an apocryphal gospel dating to about 150 A.D. Throughout the Church’s history, many of the saints, including John Eudes, Joseph Cupertino, and Padre Pio, loved to contemplate the Blessed Mother as a baby. The Italian tradition of “Maria Bambina,” or Baby Mary, marks the feast day with prayers, hymns and petitions, all enhanced by the presence of an elaborately dressed infant statue nestled in a crib. Similar celebrations, which coincide with harvest time, exist all over western and eastern Europe.

Reflecting on Our Blessed Mother as an infant and child leads the faithful where Mary always leads the faithful: to her Son.

When the time for the creation of Mary had come, the Divine Trinity decreed that she would be “exempt from the ordinary laws of mortals…it is fitting that the Divinity should clothe her in very pure matter, never sullied by sin; justice and providence demand that which is most fit, most perfect, and most holy,” writes Mary of Agreda.

Among the Virgin’s many unique attributes would be the inability of her enemy, Satan, to subdue her in any way, no matter how slight. The result would be the closest resemblance possible between Mary, Christ’s terrestrial Mother, and God, Christ’s heavenly Father, giving all of nature and heaven cause to rejoice at her coming. She is, in the words of Poet William Wordsworth, “Our tainted nature’s singular boast.”

Born to holy parents, Sts. Ann and Joachim, who had been much maligned for their inability to have a child, Mary’s conception and birth were miraculous and surrounded by supernatural graces. Her birth is inserted at the very heart of the history of salvation, she who was predestined by God to bear God to a waiting world. From the moment of her conception, Mary was free from the stain of sin by virtue of the redemptive merits of her Son.

The result was a baby in the womb who was fully cognizant of the goodness of God and filled with the loving desire to serve Him. In this pre-born baby resided perfect temperament and faculties resulting in “an infused habit of every virtue in a degree greater than any or all of the saints together,” according to Mary of Agreda.

Mary in the womb began to praise God and all of His creation, and to practice the theological virtues which would mark Her entire life. Further, She shed tears for the sins of mankind, offering Her sorrow in expiation. Her prayers and tears found great favor with God, and so began her eternal role as Mediatrix.

“During the time this Holy Child passed in Her mother’s womb, her visions (of God) were continual…and She  (sic) was raised to sublime…contemplation of the Most Blessed Trinity,” writes Mary of Agreda. “She occupied Herself (sic) in heroic acts of adoration and love of God, continual prayers in favor of mankind, and holy communications with the angels.”

Before her birth Mary fervently begged God to never allow her to fail in her life of service to Him. Already forces were at work to attack her arrival, as St. Ann suffered temptations, doubts, and injuries from others. God’s grace and the protection of the angels upheld the mother and child through all. Before Mary’s conception, God had made known to St. Ann that she would give birth to the Mother of the Savior. With this awesome awareness, St. Ann approached her role in humility and deep prayerfulness with words that every mother ought to echo: “Creator of all beings, I humbly offer Thee the fruit of my womb, which I have received from Thy infinite goodness. I thank Thee from the bottom of my heart. Do with the daughter and the mother according to Thy most holy will.”

The moment of Mary’s birth caused joy in heaven. The angels venerated her as their Queen in the arms of her mother, and they rendered themselves visible to her eyes. The Archangel Gabriel was sent to announce her birth to the souls in limbo who faithfully awaited the Messiah. The newborn herself was transported, body and soul, to heaven where God the Father bestowed on her the name of Mary, and promised that those who would invoke it with devout affection would receive abundant graces and be protected even against the terrible forces of hell. The name was announced to St. Ann by angelic spirits heralding a luminous banner.

At her conception, angels were assigned by God to protect Mary. At her birth, angels particularly chosen for their affection and devotion to the Incarnate Word joined her, continually and faithfully watching over her through Her life.

For a brief time Sts. Ann and Joachim had the blessed privilege of caring for and loving little Mary, watching her grow in beauty and holiness. As the precursor to the Holy Family of Nazareth, it was a household led by piety and grace, a home in which Mary experienced the familial intimacy she would later share with the Christ Child and St. Joseph. Having been consecrated to the temple for the glory of God, Mary left her aging parents very early and took up residence among the virgins who dedicated their lives to praising and serving God in the temple precincts. Mary of Agreda places the occurrence at a year and a half of age; other traditions say at approximately three years old.

It was in the temple that little Mary was to continue her journey of perfect submission to the will of God. It was a childhood of charity, of grace, of suffering, and of great joy. It was the training ground for what would become her extraordinary life, a life sealed on that day when an angel from heaven would ask her cooperation in a new and unimagined way. The generosity of her faith-filled response is the capstone of her early life of preparation and anticipation.

As we celebrate the Nativity of Mary, let us find the time to contemplate her predestination, her Immaculate Conception, her infancy and childhood.

“Today the barren Anna claps her hands for joy, the earth radiates with light, kings sing their happiness, priests enjoy every blessing, the entire universe rejoices, for she who is queen and the Father’s immaculate bride buds forth from the stem of Jesse.” (adapted from Byzantine Daily Worship).

You know the experience. One day you are on the beach relaxing, watching your children innocently playing in the surf. The next day you’re wedged into a pew full of tanned fifty-somethings singing “Come to the Water” at full voice, while Pastor Pete accompanies on guitar strolling up and down the main aisle. And all at once you’re wondering why you ever left home.

It’s an annual rite of passage. Sometime, somewhere during a restful vacation, far from home and your familiar parish, you suddenly realize, “Where will we go to Mass?” That’s when the panic sets in and you start to sweat but not from the ninety-degree weather.

Where do we go this year? Please, please, not the parish we tried last summer, the one with the submersible baptismal font and the altar-in-the-round. And certainly not the one from two years ago, a little further out of town, where everyone stands during the consecration and the extraordinary ministers are wearing flip-flops. I know this is a beach community, but….

It’s enough to make any reasonable-minded woman throw her missal down and shout, “Sanctuary, sanctuary!”

This year looked so promising, too. We located a parish, even further out of town, named after St. John Vianney, the Cure d’Ars. Alleluia! A suburban church dedicated to the patron saint of Catholic parish priests and — this really sealed the deal — during the “Year of the Priest,” as proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI.

“It must be a sign,” I told the kids and my husband, as we cleaned the sand from between our toes and squeezed into real shoes for the first time in five days. “If we get there before the vigil Mass, maybe we can even go to confession.”

Ah, the eternal optimist. Every family should have one.

With more than an hour to go before Mass, we became familiar with every corner of the church, every dedication plaque and every public notice on the bulletin board in the ancillary “meeting space.” We never did find the confessionals.

By bodily contortion we could just about pray in the vicinity of the tabernacle while kneeling on the tile floor. Good thing too, because it lessened the surprise of having to kneel on the same tiles during Mass, sans proper kneelers in the pews.

The people were friendly enough. In fact they never stopped chatting, unless it was to sing. The Sign of Peace took longer than the Gospel reading.

But surely the apex of the liturgy was during the consecration when the pastor, newly-appointed by the diocese, decided our responding “Amen” lacked the true gusto of the universal Church. “Come on now, we can do better than that, can’t we?” he said with all the vim of a team mascot during a big game. “Everyone, all together, and really give it to me this time: ‘Amen!”

At least it was air conditioned.

If you’ve stayed with this article so far you’re either thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve been there too” and shaking your head in commiseration, or you’re thinking “What a vacation Mass snob she is.”

Snob may be a little strong, but I do admit to being extremely protective of my rights to a valid and appropriate liturgy. I recognize that the Mass is a communal experience, but I also know that it is a sacrifice. It is solemn in its awesomeness; the Mass is necessarily a vertical experience. Even on vacation, I need quiet at Mass. I need to be alone with the Eucharistic God.

If that’s the attitude of a vacation Mass snob, then I am guilty as charged. As my 14-year-old daughter expressed as we unlocked our hot car in the parking lot, “That was like a TV show!” I don’t go to Mass to be entertained or to feel like one of the gang. I go to face my Lord and beg Him to mercifully transform me into something He can make use of.

So it was back to the beach for a last day of relaxation before we followed the predictable pattern of so many families and joined the vacation traffic heading home. As we coasted into another village of stop-and-go motorists, I spied a white framed church with a cross atop its spire, one I hadn’t noticed before. “St. Peter the Apostle Roman Catholic Church” read the roadside marker. “All are Welcome.”

Peter, Rock of the Church, Keys to the Kingdom — it must be a sign!

For next year, at least, hope springs eternal.

Why, oh why, did Catholics ever give up the many and diverse devotions which for centuries have provided people with a personal connection with heaven? As individual as our personalities, the breadth of traditional devotions to Jesus, Mary, the Holy Spirit, the angels and archangels, and the saints have served a pious purpose for many centuries when practiced with an honest heart and a soul guarded from superstitious inclinations.

It will take generations to rediscover many of these wonderful devotions, but in an effort to advance the cause just a little let me shine the light of attention on the Blessed Virgin Mary, “Undoer of Knots.” In a time of cultural complexity, of confusion and disarray in personal relationships, this beautiful devotion brings that rare commodity for which we sometimes despair: hope.

With the supernatural patience and wisdom of the Mother of God, the image of Mary, Undoer of Knots, shows the blessed Mother serenely at work untying a length of cord that is riddled with kinks and tangles, representing the difficulties in our lives. Broken relationships, sinful behaviors, unforgiven enemies, prejudices and hates, lukewarm faith, anguish and regrets, loneliness, ignorance, cowardice, and so many other human failings on our part and on the part of others are responsible for the knots in our lives.

The bondage of sin, and the realization that sins that may appear to be “freeing” actually bind and enslave us, is a traditional biblical image.  Jesus, upon raising Lazarus from the dead, declared that his bonds should be loosed so he could be set free. Our Lord gave the power of binding and loosing to Peter and the Apostles when establishing His priesthood. Sin, from the Old to the New Testament, is described as an enslavement that keeps us from the company and grace of God the Father.

Also traditional from the early Church is Mary’s role as the great mediatrix, whose nimble fingers can undo the tangles of our sins in a heavenly intercession of maternal love.

The origin for the devotion to Mary, Undoer of Knots, is a meditation from Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon and a martyr of the early Church. In his book Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), he builds upon Saint Paul’s parallel between Adam and Christ, stating “Eve, by her disobedience, tied the knot of disgrace for the human race; whereas Mary, by Her obedience, undid it…For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the Virgin Mary set free through faith.”

The beautiful image of the Undoer or Untier of Knots is a Baroque icon by Johann George Melchior Schmidtner, which has been venerated in the pilgrim church of St. Peter in Perlack (Perlach), Bavaria, Germany, since 1700. For three centuries, the devotion has survived among the faithful and appears to be growing, thanks to published booklets, websites such as www.maryundoerofknots.com , and other resources. An official publication, containing the devotion’s history, and a novena with nihil obstat and imprimatur, has been printed in 19 languages and distributed worldwide.

Contemplation of the image shows Mary with a crown of twelve stars adorning Her head, a sign of Her Queenship of the Apostles, whom She consoled and counseled after Jesus’ earthly departure. Her blue mantle represents Her glory as Queen of the Universe. Her feet crush the head of the serpent indicating Her victory over Satan. She is suspended between heaven and earth, resplendent with light, and accompanied by the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, reminding us that She became Mother of God and full of grace by virtue of the Third Person of the Trinity. Assisting Her at the task of straightening the cord of our life is an entire heavenly court of angels, signifying Her position as Queen of the Angels, and Queen of Heaven.

“Ah, the knots of our life! Knots of discord in your family…the knots of deep hurts between husband and wife, the absence of peace and joy in the home. Knots of hurt and resentment that so torture our hearts… How they suffocate the soul, beat us down, betray the heart’s joy and even the will to continue living,” writes Dr. Suzel Frem Bourgerie, a contributing author of the publication, “Mary, Undoer of Knots.” “Knots that separate us from God, chaining our arms, legs, all our being and our faith, keeping us from flinging (ourselves) like children into the arms of God and glorifying Him. The Virgin Mother does not want this to continue…She comes to you…to give Her all these snarls because She will undo them one by one…more than ever the Holy Mother of God is ready to succor those who cry out to her…”

No matter how knotted are the events in your life, the Blessed Virgin can undo the tangles because Her Son empowers Her to. Through this prayerful devotion we are reminded that sin never entangled Our Lady; that Christ gave His Mother to be our Mother, and that She is uniquely endowed with grace and perfections to fulfill Her role, which She willingly accepts out of great love and humility.

Mary, Undoer of Knots, is a devotion that speaks to the hearts of the suffering who have become entangled in ourr own vices and failings. In the related novena, we pray and entrust our specific “knots” to Her loving hands, learning how to let go of that which binds us. To be free of the weight of our own chains means our hearts and minds are free to accept God’s mercy and begin to do His will in our lives.

You may ask why we need such picturesque devotions which, to some, seem to smack of fairy tales and children’s stories. We need them because we are human. To ponder something at once fantastic and yet attainable raises our minds and strengthens our faith that this world we live in is not the only one, and is far from the best one available. Devotions, such as Mary, Undoer of Knots, take the everyday difficulties of the human experience and transform them into opportunities to grow closer to our Creator and to our goal of heaven.

“Mary, Undoer of Knots, dearest Mother, I thank you for undoing the knots in my life. Wrap me in your mantle of love, keep me under your protection, enlighten me with your peace!”

“Above all, we have something here you just can’t find anywhere else: a commitment to something beautiful, something that transcends the rest of our culture,” he opined. “Your support means that you recognize this beauty and want it in your life.”

Pretty heady stuff for an FM radio station, but it worked. Within the hour enough callers, at $100 a pop, had committed to “beauty” in a tangible way– with their checkbooks. And public radio was saved until the next fund drive.

I didn’t call in. Not because I don’t believe in the value of classical music; in fact I tune in every day. It was more because I already “donate” through my tax dollars, which are funneled into public broadcasting whether I like it or not, to pay for liberally-biased news reporting, whether I like it or not.

What did capture me, however, was the announcer’s reference to beauty. It’s a refrain I keep hearing echoes of in the strangest places. Like on home and garden television.

“Life is short and we want to have a home where we can make beautiful memories,” said a young woman, gushing in an episode of a first-time homebuyers’ show. “We know what’s really beautiful in life and our home is the place where it all happens.”

Then there are the self-help gurus with promises of success that reach into the hearts of searching individuals. “You are beautiful because you believe you are beautiful,” said one shiny-headed gentleman to a live studio audience and, I swear, there were tears in his eyes. “It’s time for you to step out into the world and say, ‘Here I am, and I AM BEAUTIFUL!”

Hmmm. Here’s the dilemma: I agree with them all. Sort of.

Classical music really is uplifting. Homeownership really is good for people. Healthy self-esteem really is essential to being happy.

But as with everything of substance, if God doesn’t form the foundation of these beliefs, they remain empty. If God isn’t in the music, it’s noise. If God isn’t in the home, it’s a facade. If God isn’t in the self-help lesson, it’s a fraud. Bereft of God these human accomplishments, rather than uplifting human nature, actually exploit for profit one of the deepest needs of individuals: to experience true beauty.

Beauty can only exist in friendship with God, with an acknowledgement of the Creator of all, and a willingness to serve Him. The reason beauty itself exists –all forms of beauty – is because God intends it to. Everything truly beautiful finds its ordered relationship with God and reflects His love for creation. The most beautiful forms of human accomplishment come from a love of God and a desire to make some small part of His omnipotence tangible and reachable to us. The reason we crave beautiful experiences in life is because we are uniquely made to do so.

Is this expecting too much of beauty? In the past, most people have never thought so. Sure, there have always been the naysayers, those who have “enlightened” themselves straight into darkness. Author and philosopher Albert Camus famously said, “Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of eternity that we should like to stretch over the whole of time.” The good news for Mr. Camus and others who despair is that true beauty is eternal and does last forever because God mercifully ordains it.

The epic history of men and women is one of reaching for beauty, in the arts and sciences, in the struggle for self-government, in many and diverse modes of personal achievement. However, the post-modern culture, which has gripped the hearts of nations, aims to blind us to this tradition of beauty by flinging the muck of secular humanism into our eyes. We don’t believe the truly beautiful is possible, necessary, or appropriate anymore. That’s because we don’t believe God is possible, necessary, or appropriate anymore.

The world is very busy killing unborn babies, killing personal excellence, killing true beauty, and insisting all of the time that this is the best way to live because it proves we are our own masters. In the meantime, we court false beauty in every way money can buy in an attempt to offset the bleakness we’ve engineered. Innately, we don’t like a world without substantial beauty. So we fabricate poor substitutes that require nothing from us.

In case you feel this is too philosophical a dilemma for most people to bother with, consider how this attitude towards true beauty has affected our politics, our economy, our health care, our families, and our future. What may sound absurd in a sound byte on the radio or television is having an impact of historical proportions. Here’s an example:

“The food we grow and cook, in the place we call home, define who we are,” stated a gourmet chef in an article I recently read.

I don’t know about you, but I want to be defined by more than what’s over my head and what’s on my dinner plate. I want to be defined as a creation of God Almighty, made in His image. That’s the only way I can be certain of my dignity, my worth, my own beauty. Without it, anyone can decide the value of my life, based on any terms. Without it, anyone can decide whether or not I deserve to exist.

Many people today seek to kill beauty as a passionate rejection of God. They want the rest of us to accept noisy music, empty houses, alternative lifestyles, and a host of other distractions in lieu of God’s beauty.

The good news, however, is that people in the 21^st century still respond to true beauty, even if they can’t explain why. It happens every time a movie with wholesome values is a surprise hit at theatres. It happens when people choose to have children without calculating the costs. It happens every time a person acts with authentic charity towards another. Even unacknowledged, God’s beauty can reach into the soul of a person and awaken a need that He has placed there and only He can satisfy.

People want to be uplifted. They want to reach above the fray for something true and wonderful and fulfilling. They still search for, whether they know it or not, the beauty that comes from the mind and heart of God.

“Truth, goodness, and beauty are but different faces of the same all,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Beauty is the mark God sets upon virtue.”

I awoke one morning from a dream in which hundreds of people were floating in wreckage and sewage, and reaching with their arms and bodies up to the sky where radiance, beauty, promise shined forth on their upturned faces. The wasteland was secular culture. The promise was the light of Christ.

Keep reaching heavenward.

Divine Mercy, a belief and understanding of God’s enormous love and compassion for His creatures, is the summary of our entire history with God. It is the ongoing story of God’s pursuance of mankind; of our imperfect relationship with Him; of His unending overtures to reach our hearts and minds; of His dying and rising in order to restore us to life in Him.

Our story — the story of the human race — begins, ends, and finds its purpose through God’s Divine Mercy. It is the thread that holds us in existence, and gives our existence meaning.

The late Pope John Paul II, who formally established Divine Mercy Sunday and who canonized Maria Faustina Kowalska, the obscure Polish nun who brought Christ’s message of mercy to the world, called Divine Mercy our “personal encounter with the merciful Savior Himself.”

If you want to know the heart of the Blessed Trinity, contemplate Divine Mercy. It is the reason for God’s persistence in calling us to Him, the reason He sent His Son to redeem us, and the reason for Christ’s willing incarceration in the tabernacles of the world.

Divine Mercy has roots that run deep into the ancient relationship between God and man, back to the moment when God first called humans into being. Our very creation, in the image of God, is caused by His merciful love. Even in the wake of Adam and Eve’s sin, and their loss of Paradise and the friendship of God, His great mercy is apparent. He promises a Savior to re-establish our relationship and to conquer the result of our sin, death.

Evidence of God’s steadfast love, known to the Hebrews as “hesed,” continues throughout the Old Testament, as God consistently tempers His justice with compassion. Cain, after killing his brother, wears the mark of God on his forehead as a warning to others who would do him violence. Noah and his family are rescued from the floodwaters; Jonah is forgiven and set on the right path. Even Sodom and Gomorrah may be spared, despite deeply heinous crimes, if enough righteous men can be found. (Alas, they are not). The first of the commandments, given to the Hebrews through Moses, promises God’s steadfast love to thousands of generations who faithfully keep His covenant.

The Israelites were the first to recognize and begin to understand Divine Mercy. Through the revelation of God, they learned that His compassionate love, “rachamim,” always tempers His judgment. The Psalms further extol God’s mercy as ruling His justice, and teach us that Divine Mercy is given without merit on our part. The Psalms also urge us to place all our trust and hope in God’s unfailing mercy, no matter what our offenses have been. God’s mercy is unchangeable, inexhaustible, and unfathomable.

The prophets tell us of the breadth of Divine Mercy, that it encompasses not just the Jewish people but all people. We learn that God’s mercy “softens” His righteous justice, and that His justice itself an act of mercy because it turns our hearts back to Him. His justice serves His mercy.

Isaiah promises that God’s mercy will crescendo in the coming of the long-awaited Savior, and His message will be for all people. It is also revealed that the Messiah, the Suffering Servant, will endure unspeakable agonies, torture and death in the name of Divine Mercy.

With the birth of Christ, God’s incomprehensible Divine Mercy takes a human shape. The Blessed Mother’s Fiat, “…He has mercy on those who fear Him…for He has remembered His promise of mercy…” is a response to the fulfillment of Divine Mercy in the coming of Her Infant Son. Mercy is now tangible, and in His earthly life the Master teaches us how to receive and respond to this great gift.

Throughout the beauty of the Gospels, Jesus instructs that Divine Mercy is the foundation of our relationship with God and the reason for our prayers, which without His mercy would be useless. It is revealed to us that Jesus IS mercy, the mercy which will make possible our salvation. The blood and water, which flow from the side of Jesus when He is pierced on the cross, baptizes the Church He has founded with righteousness and eternal life. With the death and resurrection of Christ, the zenith of Divine Mercy is realized.

Christ’s message of Divine Mercy, given to us through the writings of St. Faustina, makes it clear that every soul, no matter its state, will receive oceans of grace and mercy if we will turn to Him for forgiveness of our sins. The smallest act of heartfelt repentance on our part releases a flood of life-giving mercy that washes us clean and allows us to share in His kingdom.

Further, our renewed relationship with God necessitates that we practice mercy towards one another. Like all of God’s gifts, our gratitude and love moves us to action. Christ calls us to be examples of His Divine Mercy among our families, friends and communities. Practice of the works of mercy, both spiritual and corporal, is the goal and fruit of this devotion. We obey the Gospel command, “Be merciful even as your Father is merciful.”

There’s a saying that often shows up plastered to car bumpers: “If you want peace, work for justice.” But the truth is that justice can only exist where mercy is practiced. Only through Divine Mercy can we find the path to both peace and justice in our human experience. It is mercy that would have allowed Teri Shiavo to live. Mercy would enfold every unborn baby with love and put an end to the horror of abortion. Mercy would inspire and motivate us to provide truly charitable social programs, not government-run bureaucracies. Mercy would enable us to love our enemies as Christ did. Mercy would restore our Catholic identity and allow Christ to work through us in order to restore mankind to his Father.

Because upon the cross hangs Extreme Love and there is nowhere else to experience such a love as this.

Real life has so much to do with the Cross of Christ. Jesus’ sacrifice is perfect because it encompasses all of the common and uncommon crosses of the human experience: betrayal, despair, physical pain, poverty, fear, abuse, rejection, seeming failure, loss, death.

On Good Friday all of the suffering that afflicts the world is addressed in an act of Extreme Love by the only person Who can effectively reconcile death with life, and sin with salvation. As Jesus hangs in love upon the cross, He answers every hard question that has ever plagued us: Why do the innocent suffer? What is the purpose of death? What will be my own end?

We can only grasp a small part of the explanation Christ offers, as we gaze at Him in His willing agony. With the crucifixion we have arrived at the painful apex of God’s mysteries, and it confuses and repels us. “If you don’t like mysteries, stay away from Christianity,” says Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR. We know love is there, dying on the cross, but we can’t understand the mystery of its presence.

We’re taught by Jesus that God’s purpose is to die, so that mankind can be raised to new life. Our response to love must be love. “Love is repaid by love alone,” wrote St. Therese of Lisieux. We demonstrate our great love for God by doing the work of God—dying to ourselves and rising to Him, conforming ourselves so completely to Christ that we cooperate in His work of salvation.

Returning love, when it comes in such a form as crucifixion, is a challenge that requires grace, the type of grace that comes from prayer and meditation before the very scene we would rather flee. How can such a grotesque scene of suffering, contain the beauty of love? How can such violence be so healing? How can such a death be life-giving?

It is because Jesus Christ is both human and divine. He is God and He is man. God accomplishes this act of extreme love through the supernatural dualism of His Son. This revelation of His nature rejects the secular myth that portrays Jesus as no more than a likeable, historic figure who preached charitable love. As Fr. Angelus Shaughnessy, OFM Cap, has said, “He couldn’t have been just a nice guy. He is either the Son of God, as He said He was, or the biggest liar in the history of the world.”

More than telling the truth, Jesus was the Truth. His Humanity made the crucifixion possible. His Divinity made the crucifixion purposeful.

Additionally, we must regain the lost meaning and understand the necessity of sacrifice. To the ancient Hebrews, and to the Jews of Jesus’ time, the need for sacrifice was woven into their existence. Even a Jewish child could tell you what a sacrifice was, and why it was necessary to make right with God what men and women had perverted through sin.

This strikes directly at our attitude about sin. A society that denies sin can’t understand sacrifice because without sin there is no reason for sacrifice. Further, without sacrifice there can be no love, no matter how hard we try to capture it.

Anyone being remotely truthful must admit that things are not right in the world. Even outside of a religious perspective, people understand that suffering exists because of selfishness and injustice. They know that these bad things are definable and have damaged our ability to be humane to one another. They also know that someone needs to make what is wrong, right again.

“Something must be done. Otherwise we live in a world without moral meaning,” states Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, in his seminal book, Death on a Friday Afternoon . “Forgiveness costs—it must cost—or else the trespass does not matter.”

Someone needs to make a sacrifice, to pay a price, to “make good” on all the bad things. This enormous sacrifice must also be undertaken by someone who is above the fray, someone whose sense of justice is unmarred by his own sin. It must be made by God Himself.

“The Father and Son have colluded on a thing most astonishing,” wrote Fr. Neuhaus. “The perfect self-surrender of the cross is, from eternity to eternity, at the heart of what it means to say God is Love.”

Love hangs on the cross silently teaching us that the sacrifice above all sacrifices has been made perfectly. Jesus calls us to stay near, to listen, and to witness His transformation of our sins into forgiveness.

Challenging us to understand Who is on the cross, and why a such a sacrifice is necessary, the crucifixion also calls upon us to accept death itself. This is the final hurdle between us and the Cross of Christ. If the horror of the passion and crucifixion isn’t enough to make us turn away, the reality of death will. It may be mystifying to contemplate our existence, but it can be despairing to consider the end of that existence. “One can no more look steadily at death than at the sun,” said the 17th century writer and moralist Francois de La Rochefoucauld. Yet it may be said we spend our lives in a state of dying, being propelled towards the unknown chasm.

By the merits of Jesus’ crucifixion, we know that on the other side of the chasm of death is infinite life. Beyond the pain is joy. Christ urges us to look death in the face, to look Him in the face on the cross, and be not afraid as He goes before us always, transforming death itself into life.

“Man calls in despair, ‘Where can I go? I have reached the pinnacle, beyond is the abyss.’ And the Cry answers, ‘I AM BEYOND. Stand up!’" These words, written by the Greek philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis, describe man’s fear in following God into the jaws of death, and the Father’s promise that He awaits us in eternity.

This Good Friday, stay with Jesus through His agony and suffering. Be a silent witness to the Extreme Love Who singles you out to be His companion through the long hours of death. While the world still mocks Him, be a faithful friend and believer who remains in the moment, bitter as it is, and is not tempted to rush on to the thrill of Easter. Gaze at His Extreme Love and make some small return.

(“Poem to Christ Crucified” by Caryll Houselander)

Most faithful Catholics, after overcoming the shock of the suggestion, would have applauded such a prophecy. They would have envisioned a nation functioning in accord with God’s commandments, respecting the dignity of each human life, and standing as a beacon of hope to the rest of the world.

And they would have been wrong, wrong, wrong.

We now have people who call themselves Catholics in unprecedented positions of authority in government, and it’s the worst thing that could have happened to us. In the showdown of the political and cultural war that is rapidly escalating since January’s presidential inauguration, these baptized Catholics have been our worst enemies. They blaspheme, they cause public scandal, and they flagrantly defy Church doctrine while insisting they are “good, practicing Catholics.” With Holy Communion on their tongues, they support unrestricted abortion on demand legislation, homosexual rights agendas, irresponsible fiscal policies, and social service initiatives designed to increase public dependence upon government-run programs.

What’s scandalous about these leading Catholics is that, despite rejecting Church doctrine, they refuse to reject the Church Herself. They insist that they are Catholics “in good conscience,” whatever that phrase has come to mean. They revel in media coverage of their spiritual sincerity and seek to enlighten the rest of us that we, too, can pick and choose our beliefs regardless of the Magisterium. They refuse to leave the Church. Instead, they seem content with remaining a thorn in Her holy side.

And that’s the place where ignorance crosses the line into the diabolical. No matter how unformed, how poorly catechized these elected officials are in their Catholic faith, they must be held responsible for the intrinsically evil agendas they are promoting in our nation. Their positions of power underscore the seriousness of their sins as they jeopardize their own souls and the souls of countless others who are led by their example and word into heresy and mortal sin.

Why do Catholics in the U.S. put up with this scandal? One answer is that most Catholics don’t know what is right or wrong, particularly in the arena of morality, and specifically on the subject of sexual sins. If you consider that most people who have been baptized into the Catholic Church are contracepting, divorcing, and don’t know what the inside of a confessional looks like, it’s easy to understand how they can be numb to scandalous actions and comments by Catholic lawmakers.

Another answer is confusion about the definition of conscience. Catholics don’t (or shouldn’t) form their consciences according to political polls, national trends, or personal preference. Our consciences are formed by instruction based on Holy Scripture and 2,000 years of Church tradition, dating to when Christ walked the earth and taught the first apostles. If you are going to allow a public figure to inform your conscience, please forget Nancy Pelosi and read St. Augustine, who was just as much a public figure and can tell you everything you need to know about sexual sin.

During the French Revolution, when many Catholics found it difficult to accept the unbridled bloodshed of the new regime, they were told it was simple to overcome their consciences: just go out, commit a mortal sin, and then receive Holy Eucharist. It was the surest way to kill a conscience then, and it still is.

Just as “conscience” has been contaminated by post-modern thinking, so has “compassion.” The things we Americans let slide in the name of compassion! Homosexual adoptions, late-term abortions, pornographic classroom materials, environmental hokum, unethical mortgage lending, you name it, we’ll swallow it as long as it’s coated with a sob story about how someone isn’t being treated “fairly.” We’d rather be called foolish than prejudiced, and we’d rather condone serious sin than be considered prudes.

Approximately one-quarter of the 111th Congress is Catholic, a number slowly rising in recent decades, according to the Catholic News Service. However, an ever-growing number of Congressional Catholics are Democrats who use their legislative clout to defend their party’s anti-Catholic agenda on issues of life, marriage, finances, taxes, government regulation and more.

The likes of Catholics such as Speaker of the House Pelosi, Vice President Joe Biden, soon-to-be-confirmed Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and other cabinet and Congressional members will continue to erode opportunities for a true Catholic voice to be heard in the national arena. Their presence undermines Gospel values and the clear role of Catholics in today’s confused world.

What should our response be to our own worst enemies? We pray for their conversions, and the salvation of their souls. We also look to St. Paul, who reminds us “…that to (those who) love God, all things work together unto good…” (Romans 8:28). For every Joe Biden, there is a zealous young man studying for the priesthood. For every Nancy Pelosi, there is a mother teaching the undiluted faith to her children. For every public official who is staining the Bride of Christ with their lies and dissent, there is a parish community immersed in the sacraments, which bring life and light to our consciences and empower us, despite our imperfections, to be faithful followers of Christ in and out of season.

The very presence of unfaithful Catholics on the national scene, and their perverted representation of the True Faith, is assisting in a renewal of Catholic expression, thought, and learning within parishes, schools, convents, seminaries, and most importantly, in homes. It is a movement that John Paul II prophesied would be a new springtime for the Catholic Church, and it is happening now. The inspiration is from the Holy Spirit, but much of the fuel for the fire, so to speak, is provided by the enemy within as they continually prick our determination to defend the Church of Christ.

Men and women of orthodox Roman Catholic faith are entering the ranks of law, education, mass communications, and yes, even politics. We are already seeing young priests and religious changing the course of the Church in America, as well as the thousands of young families who innately flock to them. In another generation, the numbers will multiply and the groundswell will continue to gain power.

Although the secular world may laugh at the thought of seemingly unpowerful people influencing the course of American politics and culture, they are wrong. They fail to see the eternal irony of God, Who takes the lowly and raises them up; Who takes the weak and makes them strong; and Who chooses to use the small to accomplish the greatest things.

So our own worst enemies will, in God’s design, serve a purpose after all.

Probably, like a lot of us, not as well as you had hoped. You might have started out with strong intentions, but you’ve flagged in recent weeks. The old zeal just isn’t what it was back in the soul-searching days following Ash Wednesday. The clocks have changed, the weather has changed, and so have we.

But they don’t call it the Gospel for nothing. The “Good News” now is that it’s not too late to prepare our souls for the joy of Easter. With the sorrows and Passion of Holy Week coming, it’s an ideal time to strengthen ourselves by rejuvenating our minds, our attitudes, and our prayers. Within Lent, there’s time to start anew.

In fact Lent is all about renewal, and even though the climax of new life occurs at Easter there are signposts of renewal all along the Lenten road. There is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel of God promises new life, Emmanuel, in response to Mary’s fiat; there is Jesus’ revelation to Nicodemus that we must become born again in the Spirit in order to reach the Kingdom of God; and there is the great miracle of Lazarus being raised from the dead, a powerful symbol of Christ’s authority and triumph over sin and death.

To begin again in Lent, it’s important to realize how much Jesus loves us. Lent is not purely a test of our compliance, it’s an opportunity to return His great love in ways we have not explored before. Christ wants us to succeed in loving Him and He goes to great lengths to show us the way to the cross and to resurrection. He’s on our side in the battles we have with ourselves, not watching from a distance and clucking His tongue at us in disappointment. That’s a trick of Satan, not the practice of Our Lord.

“Conversion is nothing more than a deeper discovery of what we already truly desire,” writes Venerable John Henry Newman, the English priest who converted from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism and was a major figure in the Oxford Movement.

We already know what we desire, even if we haven’t called it by name. We want to be loved. We want the fruits of receiving and giving love, such as peace and a satisfaction with life despite its manifold imperfections.

To draw closer to Christ in mutual love requires our conversion. We can’t get there without it. If we want to make the most of these last weeks of Lent, we’ve got to give something that we’d really rather hold on to. It might be as big as forgiving someone who has done a great wrong to us; it might be as small as making frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of our busy routines.

If you need guidance in finding your path to a Lenten conversion, look close to home first. God Himself knows which path is right for each of us and, with love, He sends the means to effect our conversion, whether we like it or not.

“The best of all penance is that which God sends us,” said Bernard William Cardinal Griffin, speaking in 1952. “Acts of self-denial which we freely choose are precious in the sight of God. But far more precious are those sufferings which we have not chosen and which come to us unasked…To accept God’s will without complaint is the greatest contribution that any Christian can make to the cause of world peace.”

It’s funny, we never think about world peace when we’re faced with suffering, during Lent or at any other time. That’s partly because we’re so wrapped up in ourselves, but it’s also because we don’t understand the mystery of the Body of Christ, and the supernatural relationship among each person on the planet. By drawing closer to Christ in love during Lent, we’re assisting to draw the world closer together. Can you imagine what would happen if every Christian did God’s will? The combined power would supercede all politics, all cultural wars, and all terrorism. The conversion of the world begins with you and with me. So the importance of our Lenten conversion becomes all the more significant.

To make a good end to Lent, let’s go back to the beginning of it. The entire structure of the season is based on Christ’s 40 days in the desert and the three temptations of Satan. Jesus was hungry, tired, lonely and weak. He was in the final stretch and needed rejuvenation, just as we do now. Satan launched his offensive, but the depth of Jesus’ love for His Father, and for us, sustained Our Lord.

Satan offers food to Jesus, knowing His great hunger. The bread symbolizes our own appetites, not only for food and drink, but for all material things including possessions, entertainment, leisure and a comfortable lifestyle. Our appetites for such temptations are never sated. We’re always planning our next activity, our next purchase, our next enjoyment.

Satan then urges Jesus to test God, His Father, by throwing Himself from the heights and trusting God to rescue Him. Here is the great temptation of pride, which leads us into reckless behaviors because we think we deserve more than what God has ordained for our lives. We demand God should agree with what we believe we deserve. The truth is that striving for what we want should always dovetail with striving for what God wants from us.

Finally, Satan promises all the kingdoms of the world to Christ if He will worship the fallen angel. This is the promise of self-divinity, that we can be like gods and rule our own lives and the lives of others. It is the temptation that propels men and women to believe that sin does not exist, that heaven and hell are myths and that true enlightenment comes from within the human mind. Every time we limit our obedience to God, we are practicing self-divinization.

Christ shatters all of Satan’s illusions. By His faithfulness through temptation, we learn that it is God alone Who satisfies all of our appetites; that we must place our trust in His commandments and providence, and not in our own judgment; and that His love and omnipotence has established the one, true Kingdom where eternal life awaits us.

These are the temptations we are still battling today. These are the hurdles on our road to a Lenten conversion. Our hope is in Christ, Whose mercy led Him to establish God’s Kingdom on earth at a great price. He has already won the battle for us, if we would follow His example and teaching. Christ has already overcome what we face right now.

“A man converted is a man who has changed his essential thinking and has aimed his faith in a different direction,” said Antonin Gilbert Sertillanges, OP, a Thomistic theologian and spiritual writer. “Every day, at every hour, we must be converted, that is turned about and turned back towards God from whom the current of life continually turns us away. Conversion means a willingness to see the truth…and conform (ourselves) to it.”

Pray for me, and I will pray for you, as we continue to walk the road to Calvary and the path towards conversion in Christ that He promises will lead to eternal life.

Christ does choose to physically heal them, one after the other, but He gives them all a bonus, something they didn’t expect and weren’t thinking about: spiritual healing. In fact, He often withholds fulfilling their hopes for physical health until He has addressed the state of their souls and the depths of their faith in Him. Their spiritual sicknesses are Christ’s primary concern.

In every case these sufferers draw close to Christ in order to receive healing. In every case the sufferer does something extraordinary to meet with Christ. The leper leaves the restrictions of his colony; the deaf man and the blind man are both led by Jesus away from the crowds in the villages; the paralytic is lowered through the roof of the house where Our Lord is.

What do we have in common with these Gospel characters? While many people were clambering for Christ’s healing, these are the individuals recorded as particular examples for our meditation. What’s blocking up our ears? What’s blinding our eyes? Which of the many distractions or temptations of the world have paralyzed our limbs and our hearts in following the call of Christ? And what kind of extraordinary effort are we willing to make in order to encounter the Messiah and be healed by Him?

We start Lent with ashes, an outward sign of our inward spiritual illnesses and weaknesses. For one day, on our foreheads, we publicly declare that we recognize our failings and are sorry for them. Just like the leper, the blind man and the paralytic, we seek healing and reconciliation.

As for the other 39 days of Lent, the power to seek conversion is sleeping within us. We came from dust and it is certain to dust we will return. But let us consider the power of our humanity while we are on this short earthly journey. By virtue of our free will (itself a gift from God) we are given the power to choose whether we will pursue healing for our sins or not, whether we will draw close to Christ or keep ourselves at a comfortable distance. In this way we could say that we have great power over God: the power to reject Him.

Once we consider this power we can become more sensitive to the vulnerabilities of Christ, Whose Heart beats with love and forgiveness for each of us. “I desire that you know more profoundly the love that burns in My Heart for souls… ” laments the Savior in The Diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalski, Divine Mercy in My Soul. “I want to give Myself to souls; I yearn for souls…Imagine the most tender of mothers who has great love for her children, while those children spurn her love. Consider her pain. No one can console her. This is but a feeble image and likeness of My love .”

Recognizing the great potential that exists between our free will and Christ’s mercy is necessary to our spiritual journey. The former is in constant flux, but the latter is constant and fathomless. Where these two forces intersect, there is holiness. How often they intersect is a decision most of us tend to re-negotiate every day, with an eye towards moderation and comfort. Moderate love, however, is not what Christ desires. A lukewarm Lent minimizes His opportunities to heal us from sin and give us the expansive freedom that comes from placing our ordinary lives in His extraordinary hands.

Understanding the relationship between our free will and Christ’s vulnerability in His love for us also places quite a different spin on our Lenten journey. It changes the dichotomy of a demanding Lord and a subjugated servant to the intimacy of friendship and deep love. It’s the difference between obligation and oblation, as we move away from an attitude of “giving up” things to giving freely of ourselves. Now we begin to really understand why we make sacrifices for Lent—doing without dessert, television, internet, gossip, resentment, pride—because these unvirtuous distractions get in the way of intimacy with Christ. They get in the way of loving Him. And Jesus wants so much to be loved by us.

Between the extremes of rejecting Christ or subjecting ourselves to His will are myriad gradations, like the measurements on a precision scale. With Christ as the center point, the sliding scale of our lives modulates in its nearness to Him, with each decision we make placing us either closer to Him or further away. It’s like a child’s game of taking giant steps forward or baby steps backward. We are in constant motion and continual tension between doing His will or ours.

“At the end of the day, I ask myself just two questions: What did I do for Christ today, and what did I do to Christ today ?” stated Blessed Teresa of Calcutta in her usual matter-of-fact manner. All of the saints were acutely aware that either we are for Christ or we are against Him. There is no possibility of standing still on the sliding scale of faith.

If we are looking for a fruitful Lent, a Lent of healing and intimacy, it won’t come to us in a comfort zone. Christ penetrates to the heart of those He touches and makes it clear that He has come to bring much more than physical relief. The real suffering of mankind is our estrangement from our Creator and the healing we need is the type that reaches into our souls.

How did this happen to St. Valentine’s Day? How did the remembrance of Christian martyrdom, and the spreading Christ’s gospel, become an annual excuse for every thing from fat-cheeked cherubs to licentious behavior?

The answer is sex, of course, and greed for profit. Sex and greed drive American culture on every level. They define our economy, they motivate the business world, and they monopolize all forms of entertainment. They manipulate our children, overwhelm our teens, and have most adults living in a haze of desire and frustration.

However, within the candy-coated cacophony of Valentine’s Day, amid the hype and secularization of what the day has become, is the grain of truth. We are fascinated with finding and experiencing love. We prize it and chase after it and wish our lives could be filled with it. We want to be cherished, to be someone’s joy. It is exactly this vulnerability of our characters, this yearning for love, which evil exploits, perverting what God has intended to be the noblest of our desires.

What is it about our human nature that predisposes us for love? God Himself. God is love (1 John 4:8) and we are made in His image. Placing in each being, born and unborn, an innate desire to love and be loved, God provides the answer to the very longing He creates. What we do with this desire, how we seek to fulfill it through the course of our lives, dictates whether or not we will ever find "true love."

God would not create us, place a desire for love in us, and then leave us orphans to discover how to satisfy such a complex and deep-rooted need. It makes sense to turn to Him, the Source of Love, if we are to understand how to find it and experience it. St. Paul (1 Corinthians 13:4-8) gives us a "check list" of sorts, putting it as plainly as he can:

Love is patient; love is kind
Love is not jealous; it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish.
Love is never rude, nor self-seeking, nor prone to anger;
Nor does it brood over injuries.

Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices with the truth.
There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.
Love never fails.

If you were tempted to skip over those lines, please go back and re-read them. This time try replacing every reference to the word "love" with your own name. Go ahead. It’s a sobering exercise in confronting what love really is.

Whether we are spouses, parents, siblings, friends, or — like the Good Samaritan — strangers, our names should be synonymous with the word love. St. Paul, inspired by God, tells us what love is supposed to be and what it shouldn’t be, speaking in a manner so straightforward that it challenges us just as effectively today as it did the Corinthians 2,000 years ago. Which leads us to another truth about love-it is unchanging. (Unlike Valentine fads and boxer shorts.)

True love sounds impossible, and without God it is. Like every other attribute of God, love is a mystery and we can only understand what He mercifully reveals to us. How do we become patient, kind, generous and true, how do we prepare to love and to be loved? It starts with our relationship to God.

"Our hearts are restless, until they rest in you, O Lord," avers St. Augustine in his Confessions . We can’t love others and be loved ourselves until we discover God’s love for us. Through an intimate relationship with our Creator first, we can then find the paths that lead to true love with our fellow creatures, whether in a friendship, a marriage, a family or a world-wide community. This remains true for every type of love that we seek: fraternal, familial, sexual and spiritual.

When you remove God from the discussion of love, you forfeit your ability to understand any portion of the mystery. Furthermore, love without God morphs into other things, ugly things, such as lust instead of charity and self-gratification instead of commitment. Instead of filling our lives with satisfaction and joy, this "love" becomes an excuse for victimization and betrayal, replacing hope with despair.

Love without God can take wicked turns and disguise itself as a noble concept, such as "compassion," "social justice," or "dignity." If ever there was a nation fallen prey to false love, it is the United States. Under cunning guises of compassion, freedom, understanding and choice, our society has accepted homosexual behavior, euthanasia and abortion, all diabolical and all false imitations of true concepts. As we can see, without God, true love is unsustainable.

Of course those faithful to the Gospel know that love can’t be separated from God, no matter how much people desire such an amputation. "All love is a determination to be God-like," states Fr. John Corapi, SOLT. "True love is not a feeling. It is a decision." If love is God-like, then it is God-centered and can not survive without His presence.

According to tradition, Saint Valentine (derived from the word "valens," meaning "worthy") was either one saint or several who lived in Roman times. The traditional feast day is not included in the liturgical calendar, however Valentine remains on the list of saints the Church proposes for our veneration. The feast of Saint Valentine was first established in 496 by Pope Gelasius I who included Valentine among those "… whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose acts are known only to God." It would seem that Valentine, like many aspects of love, must remain something of a mystery to us.

Legend has Valentine performing marriages for faithful Roman Christians, at peril of his life, and carrying messages of love and Gospel teachings to and from prisons to give hope to the persecuted. During the 14th century, when conventional belief held that birds begin to pair on February 14 (halfway through the second month of the year), popular customs became associated with the feast day. It was looked upon as specially consecrated to lovers and as a proper occasion for writing love letters and sending lovers’ tokens, or valentines.

Valentine’s Day comes shortly before Ash Wednesday and the start of the Lenten season, and its no coincidence that one follows the other. It’s the time of year when God especially calls us to get our hearts in order so we can experience the true love He offers in His Son’s sacrifice and resurrection from the dead. Even death has no hold on those who seek the love of God.

As Christians, we have been given a great treasure of love that we are meant to share with all mankind. We have the opportunity, through our words and the witness of our lives, to take back the definition of true love from a secular world that has perverted and exploited it. At the time of Saint Valentine, amid rampant political and personal corruptions of every kind, the light of the faithful Christians served as a beacon of hope and truth in a world consumed with evil.

"See the way they love one another!" wrote the early Christian author Tertullian, quoting the pagans of the time who were astonished at the loving and sacrificial behavior of the Christian communities. Wives and husbands loved one another and dedicated themselves to their children. Many Christians joyously embraced celibacy for the sake of Christ. All took care of the sick, the poor and the orphaned. And the entire community derived their love from prayer, penance, and the Eucharist in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the same could be said of us today? "See those Catholics, see the way they love one another! They stand outside of abortion clinics because of love. They fill the Churches because of love. They stay married and have children because of love. They enter monasteries and religious orders because of love. They find joy and satisfaction in love.

"What do they know about love that we don’t?"