Happy Valentine's Day!

"Beloved let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so love us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us." (1 John 4:7-12)

In the late 3rd Century, a priest or bishop of Rome named Valentine was martyred by the authorities of the Roman Empire. Next to nothing is known about him. Many legends sprang up about him. It was said that he tried to convert the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius Claudius, also known as Claudius Gothicus or Claudius II, who responded by having him executed. In the early middle ages, Valentine became associated with love. While we know very little about the historical Valentine, we know that martyrs for the early church followed one of Jesus' most noble teachings: "Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). One unique and deeply mysterious aspect of Christianity is its teaching on love. While many religions teach love, there is no religion which is founded solely on love like Christianity. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus said: "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29-30). Our Scriptures begin with the love story of God for Adam and Eve, and end in the Revelation of God's love for the resurrected Christians. Our Scriptures include the great romances between Abraham and Sarah, Rebekah and Isaac, Ruth and Boaz, David and Abigail, the bride and the groom in the Song of Solomon, and are crowned with the wonderful love of Jesus for his followers, the poor, the afflicted, the sinners, the lost, and even his enemies and executioners. In the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles, we read of the early Christians' love for each other, of Paul's love for the churches he planted, of the Holy Spirit's work of love through the hearts of men and women called to the Good News. To know love one must know the God of Scripture, for nowhere else is true love shown in all its many manifestations. Jesus taught us to love the way God loves all things, and it is through love that we come into salvation and eternal felicity.

To learn more about God's love, you may want to read Ruth, The Song of Solomon, The Gospel of John and 1 John in the Bible. You may also want to read On Loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux.

"If I speak in the tongues of men and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecy, it will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13)