Love=Sacrifice

So it's that annual observance of St. Valentine's Day.  While couples all over were going out to be together, I found myself alone on this evening.  Every one in my house was out at dinner time, so I enjoyed dinner by myself (Culver's delicious beef pot roast dinner).  And I was fine with being alone, as it speaks to my being single, which I'm also more than okay with.  I'm in no rush to find a significant other, or to get married.  In the mean time, I'm really enjoying being single.

But what's more, I have a sense that God is using this time of being single to form me in what it means to be engaged in an loving relationship with a woman.  It's more than those romantic feelings that rush through me.  It's about love as a giving of myself for the sake of the woman, in the model of Christ, who gave of Himself for the sake of His people.

I think of this kind of sacrificial love in a couple of different, real-life stories:

I still remember St. Valentine's Day two years ago, I went into the ValpU library as is my daily custom to look at the Chicago Tribune.  When I looked at the picture on the front page, I quickly realized I recognized the couple in the picture as the Wymans, who are members of my home parish.  They were featured in a news article about husbands taking care of their wives with long-term illness.  Doug Wyman shows how much he loves his wife by caring for her daily needs, a love which has lasted from the day they came together--a real, substantial love that has not ceased with changing circumstances.

Then there was the story of a couple I read about in Mike Huckabee's book Dear Chandler, Dear Scarlett, in which he dispenses his words of wisdom on various life subjects to his two grandchildren.  Mr. Huckabee told about a couple he knew:  The wife slowly succumbed to the effects of Alzheimer's disease.  Even though the staff at the facilities she stayed at said that they could take care of feeding her, the husband insisted strongly that he feed her for every meal.

Mr. Huckabee writes about how one day, he came to visit them, but he stopped at the door of the room as he watched the husband feed his wife.  She had gotten to the advanced stage of the disease in which she was only able to eat as her muscles' reflexes caused the swallowing of the food.  She was otherwise oblivious of her husband's feeding her.  But that didn't matter:  As long as she had breath, her husband was determined to honor her, giving of himself for her.  Reading that story, I couldn't help but think of how powerfully that demonstrates real love.

That's the kind of love that has substance, and carries us in relationships beyond those initial giddy feelings.  That's what I'm gaining a sense of in this time in my life, so I can be ready to give of myself in a relationship when God calls me into the vocation of married life.  I like how the marriage is considered a vocation sacrament, along with Holy Orders, as it is a lifestyle to which God calls us.

Sometimes, I think St. Valentine's Day is kind of overrated.  But maybe that has to do more with how it gets caught up in superficial expressions that are espoused.  I feel this day has real substance in the more profound expressions of love, as so eloquently put by Pope Francis when he spoke at an event for 10000 engaged couples at the Vatican today.  You can read about it here: http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-meets-with-engaged-couples-in-st-pete

I like how he emphasizes that this occasion should be about celebrating not what the world considers pleasurable, but about celebrating the love manifested in Christian faith.

Indeed, I celebrate this day real, profound love, which equals sacrifice, the kind of love God first showed us in Jesus Christ, which is to be expressed in any relationship, as a way of showing love back to God.