Ew.
Did anyone notice this makes the acronym SAD?
Today is Valentine’s Day and I will be celebrating all the love in my life. Though not to a husband or boyfriend, there is much love to give.
I have made 96 mini-valentines for my students using the old white-crayon-and-watercolor trick, and I have found 96 unique quotes about love from Scripture and the saints. Today we’ll go to the chapel and pray to understand the words in our minds and hearts, and we’ll find a way this calls us to action in our lives.
Later this evening when I know people are out on special Valentine’s dates (or making fun of the concept of special Valentine’s dates, but at least together), I might feel down. So I might, might do the Beyoncé ‘Single Ladies’ dance. Well, probably not. But I will remember and give thanks that love cannot be found first in a person, but in the Person of Christ.
He is the love of our lives. He’s a bit on the shy side – only shows up in the appearance of Bread and Wine nowadays. Yet I would suggest that anyone who does not first fall in love with Christ and let him fall in love with them will have difficulty calling another person their Valentine.
I’ll leave you with a favorite quote, from Blessed John Paul II’s encyclical Redemptor Hominis:
Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. … The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly, … he must, with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ.[1]
