Thoughts on Love At Valentine’s Day
As St. Valentine’s Day approaches, we are all reminded to buy flowers or chocolates (or even diamond jewelry); to cook a special dinner; or plan a really special evening otherwise with a spouse or loved one. I wonder if St. Valentine would have approved of all this hoopla, so focused on romantic love (eros), rather than any of the other types of love named by the Greeks: agape (unconditional, even sacrificial love), storge (parental/ familial devotion), and philia (friendship).
St. Valentine’s biography is pretty sketchy, and the name can be tied to at least two separate Catholic priests of the 3rd century, both martyrs. One of them reportedly married lovers to help the men avoid compulsory military service, which applied only to single males. The other supposedly befriended and healed his jailer’s daughter of her blindness, before he was also martyred, after writing her a letter signed “Your Valentine.” In both situations, the saint’s concern was perhaps not necessarily focused on romantic love, but on assuring life in its abundance for the young men or for the blind daughter of his Roman jailer. So these maybe were situations involving philial love of the priest for the person in need standing before him, and not the priest’s romantic love for another person, though of course, considering the martyrdom, we might instead consider this agape love.
My dad was always reminding his children and grandchildren who were on the brink of marriage that they needed to be certain of their love relationship with their fiancé/fiancée, certain enough to know that devotion could take over when romance began to wane! That’s a good reminder to all of us that ALL types of love relationships shift and grow, change and deepen, evolve and perhaps ease, sometimes in ways we cannot imagine, in the decades before the bond is finally severed by death. Even when romantic love wanes, devotion can be a loving bond that assures (sometimes even after a divorce) a desire to serve the loved one in any way possible. And often the development of a deep friendship between people can lead to devotion that lasts for decades, just as romantic love can do.
Remember that childhood song, “God is Love, the Snowflakes Whisper, as they float down from the sky”? How I loved singing all the verses of that song in Sunday School, about the rain, the birds, the stars, all doing their thing and telling us that “God is Love”! That lesson, that God is the source of all love, is so important, for it grounds us in the knowledge that love should be our guiding principle in many decisions we have to make throughout our lives. Love is, I believe, the most faithful basis for a choice, rather than anger, or presumed wisdom, or worry about what others will think of us if we do something or other. When love is our motivation, we can seldom go as far wrong in a decision as we otherwise might.
This Valentine’s Day, may you be guided by love in your life, especially in the knowledge that we are all first loved by God, and that our greatest service in this life is to treat others with that same love, or as near to it as we can come, imperfect as we are.
Happy Valentine’s Day, dear friends!
Annette Citzler is a La Grange native and former professor at Texas Lutheran University.