Dear Valentine’s Day,
I have a long standing tradition of pretty much hating you. There is a hopeless romantic buried somewhere in me, but you haven’t helped in bringing that hopeless romantic back to life. I walk into groceries stores and want to vomit at the amount of pink that overwhelms me. Why do people believe that love only gets one shining day a year? Share the love, stop hogging it for one day.
Love,
Amanda
In high school my Christian club (and I, it’s vice president) wore shirts that told of the truth of the day: God. His love. 1 John 4:10 says, “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us.” That’s the quote I chose for my shirt because it is in Christ that we discover what love really means.
So why do I have a tradition of hating Valentine’s day? Break-ups (yes, I’ve been dumped on Valentine’s Day. Twice.), big fights, lost friendships, pain and sorrow have led me to dislike Valentine’s Day like I do. One might think that as someone in a happy relationship I would shut up and enjoy Valentine’s day. One might be…half right. I enjoy it in so far as it is a day that I get to spend worshipping God, and this year I get to spend it being thankful for Mr. Irish. And I am unspeakably thankful for God and for Mr. Irish (in that order), but this blog isn’t one to parade around my happiness (I once referred to this day as Singles Awareness Day). This blog is one to promote the source of all love, the reason we are blessed with loved ones in the first place: God. So today I’ll leave you with a few of my favorite quotes about love of all kinds in the hopes that you are moved to be thankful and grateful for love every single day, not just one pink-filled, chocolate-covered day a year.
“The measure of love is to love without measure” – Saint Augustine
“Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love” – William Shakespeare
“Love and truth are inseparable” – Hans Urs Von Balthasar
“Faith is our response to God’s gift of unconditional love” – Father Christopher Kirchgessner, O.S.B.
“Hatred stirs up disputes, but love covers all offenses” – Proverbs 10:12
“As the heavens tower over the earth, so God’s love towers over the faithful” – Psalm 103:11
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love” – 1 John 4:18
“Love is most nearly istelf when here and now cease to matter” – T.S. Eliot
“Though our feelings come and go, God’s love for us does not” – C.S. Lewis
“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within” – James Baldwin
“Love in this sense – love as distinct from ‘being in love’ – is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit.” – C.S. Lewis
“Let unifying love be your measure, abiding love your challenge, self-giving love your mission” – Pope Benedict XVI
“Love is itself the fulfillment of all our works. There is the goal; that is why we run: we run toward, and once we reach it, in it we shall find rest” – Saint Augustine
“Genuine love perfects the life and enlarges the existence of the person” – Blesssed Pope John Paul II
“If we do not encounter love, if we do not experience it and make it our own, and if we do not participate intimately in it, our life is meaningless. Without love we remain incomprehensible to ourselves” – Blessed Pope John Paul II
“Love is the beauty of the soul” – Saint Augustine
“The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, in spite of ourselves” – Victor Hugo
“To fall in love with God is the greatest of all romances; to seek Him, the greatest adventure; to find Him, the greatest human achievement” – Saint Augustine
“In the absence of love, there is nothing worth fighting for” – Elijah Wood
“Love without action is just as dead as faith without action” – Andrea Shatto
“You can give without loving, but you cannot love without giving” – Amy Carmichael
“Love is the fundamental and innate vocation of every human being” – Blessed Pope John Paul II
“It is not moments of unleashed passion that prove our love, but the countless hours of commitment spent between” – Unknown
“God loves us; we need only to summon up the humility to allow ourselves to be loved.” – Pope Benedict XVI
“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, it’s what you are expected to give – which is everything” – Katharine Hepburn
“To love is to be transformed into what we love. To love God is therefore to be transformed into God” – St. John of the Cross
