There is always a powerful fire of love deep beneath everything.

— Norm MacDonald

St. Valentine’s day, so oft de-sanctified in name, has become a sad occasion for many. Perhaps it is because of the holiday’s de-holi-fication, that too many trust in the secular as a basis for love rather than invoking the saints or imploring the Divine. Perhaps it is because those who do not wish to spend the day bereft of romance have as such been on the road to graduating from minority status. Perhaps that fact is due to the disintegration of culture and the resultant inability of young men and young women to find each other. Perhaps this is all a bit morose for the occasion — an accusation I shall accept phlegmatically. 

The list of troubles affecting Americans’ collective understanding of love, marriage and monogamy could be expounded ad absurdum with little difficulty. I sincerely doubt that the majority of cases of loneliness, melancholy and undesired isolation on this day could not be adequately explained by said plethora of societal deficiencies. The issue is not those happy few who contentedly enjoy the lack of dinner obligations and the abundance of discounted chocolate that their singleness affords, but the epidemic of those who are oftentimes not only deprived of romantic companionship but of any companionship at all. As we who walk by faith know, the searing desire for romantic affection, like the growling of an empty stomach or the licking of parched lips, is a pale reflection of the ultimate desire for our humanity to be fulfilled in union with our Lord.

It should be clear that this is not to suggest that these shadowy, material desires are somehow wrong any more than to suggest that a symbol is wrong because it isn’t identical to the thing it signifies. The joys of godly love, of good food and drink are a language through which God communicates the joys of His providence in salvation. So, the cure to Valentine’s woes is not really in romance, but in the reality which romance suggests. In that spirit, I hope to contribute to consecrating St. Valentine’s day, insofar as it falls within my meager power to do so, as a once again truly holy day.

I read an excellent piece lately on the correspondence of the liturgical calendar to the natural calendar, though the seeds of the topic were first sown in my mind on hearing a suggestion that Christmas is observed in the dead of winter because it is when the night is darkest that the star of the Hero emerges, speaking mythically. Much as joy-hating secularists may pat each other on the back as they purport to demolish Christian tradition with factoids about the pagan origins of Easter, they would probably cock their heads and cartoonishly scratch the same at the suggestion that this is not a bad thing. More precisely, it seems appropriate to describe pagan springtime celebrations of all stripes as finding their fulfillment and sanctification in the Resurrection. 

Among the church fathers, there is a notion that Christ’s baptism, being clearly not for His own sanctification, is actually for the sanctification of water, that is to say, that water finds its true telos in the baptism instituted by Christ. Similarly, the Resurrection is a baptism of springtime. The budding to life of the natural world at spring is a pale shadow of the blossoming of eternal life in the raising of “the firstfruits of the dead.” While pagan rites and ceremonies around spring have often been rooted in the worship of creation, and thus in sensual and often depraved invocations of fertility, Easter heightens our understanding of spring as a reference beyond the sensual. What spring is to the earthly, Easter is to the spiritual. Easter baptizes springtime. 

Poets like Chaucer, apparently, may have associated St. Valentine’s Day with love through the time of year in which many birds return from their migratory journeys and begin their respective rituals in search of mates. For such birds, the long journey of winter ends with the return to a loving embrace. The season of St. Valentine’s Day is the transient period between the hard, cold trial of winter migration and the vivacious warmth of spring. It is not quite springtime yet, just the search for it. 

It may be that this fact most basically explains the sad and lonely shadow of St. Valentine’s in this age. Without the hope of the Resurrection, the Apostle tells us we are to be pitied above all others. Without the baptism of spring, it cannot become itself. It remains hollow, an empty signifier, an undefined term. For those without the hope of the Resurrection, there is no spring. Such are trapped in the Narnian eternal winter of the White Witch, which notably excludes Christmas. St. Valentine’s, the gateway from the dark night to the rising of the Son that brings the lively day, becomes a reminder of the endless winter. It is a return of birds who have no home. Divine hope is one of the three greatest virtues, and without it there is no spring.

And, of the three greatest virtues, love is the greatest. Apart from it, there is no hope. Love is the root of all reality. The cosmos is born of God’s love unto God’s glory. The rhythms of the stars, the music of the spheres, the changing of the seasons move to the tempo of God’s providential love. The natural world bears witness to the patterns of God’s love, to the death and rebirth, the separation of land from sea and light from darkness, created in the beginning and redeemed at Golgotha. 

All of this is, admittedly, quite far upstream from chalky candy hearts and red mylar balloons. But such cultural artifacts, frivolous as they often are, do not come into existence from nothing or for nothing. Perhaps there is a reason why the ephemera of winter holidays tends, for example, toward nostalgia. Christmas is about the only time of year some of my favorite crooners like Dean Martin and Nat King Cole re-enter the mainstream, but the other notable time is not Easter or All-Saints, it’s St. Valentine’s. I think we know, deeper than knowing, but feeling in our bones as truly as we feel the changes in the weather that the love animating St. Valentine’s Day is ancient. 

And winter is indeed nostalgic. Just as the events of the past often appear in nighttime dreams — or, in worse cases, long-past traumas and embarrassments prevent the would-be sleeper from getting rest — the dark night of winter pulls the present from our sight and drives us to warm by the hearthfires of memory. Harvesttide is over, only old stores of food serve survival through the winter. The birds leave us, the leaves perish, the sun hides his face. It is not a time for seeking something new, but the time for dusting off what is old. 

At St. Valentine’s Day, though spring threatens, the nostalgia of winter still lingers. What I mean to say is, where spring is new life, winter is old death. Where spring is hope fully realized, winter is hope still anticipated. It is the faith of fear and trembling. St. Valentine’s Day heralds the preparation, the sowing of seed, the seeking of a companion, the awaiting of hope. Palm Sunday is only a month away and the Epiphany and Baptism of our Lord only a month ago. Our hearts, sleeping through the winter, awakened by the Bethlehem star, are in the adoration, the arrival at the cradle of young Hope incarnate. The Mystery beheld in secret has been announced in the waters of Jordan. The new has come, and the old is beginning to pass away.

“Love is in the air,” some may say. It is truer than they know. The air grows warmer with it, the sun grows brighter. Truly, life is in the air. Much like the anxiety of young romance is the season anticipating spring. The Kingdom of Heaven is near at hand.

It should go without saying that this is all very speculative. This is not science, and I am not credentialed, being quite a neophyte in the practices of the liturgical calendar. But, even if — Heaven forbid —this were science, one could confidently say that a working theory is better than a total gap in knowledge. Meditation as an outgrowth of the Christian faith in practice is not in itself the attainment of perfection but the aspiration thereunto (Philippians 3:12). 

And so, perhaps divine love is the perfection to which all creation aspires. Plato’s world of forms is quite suggestive of, in my thinking, the Kingdom of Heaven. God’s love is embodied on earth in an unnatural heterogeneity with the voids of sin’s privation. Heaven is God’s love embodied fully, purely, and unhindered. The stars, closely associated with God’s messengers, are like little pinholes in the firmament of nothingness that reveal the infinite light behind it, the glow of love beyond the great privation. Heaven is the world of the forms, I say, and Jesus brings the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, permitting the illusions of the material to not only touch but overlap their forms. He breathes Spirit back into the disintegrating clay of Man.

I should probably have warned at the outset of this endeavor that I am not terribly sappy, which fact does not terribly suit the typical Valentine’s fare. I reserve the right to remain sappy purely in private, as it were. But, nonetheless, I think it may be beneficial to understand that the typical kitschy sweetness of St. Valentine’s should not be an end unto itself. We, brothers and sisters, have a higher calling than this. In an age of superficial self-worship through the sacramentizing of feeling, to think deeply on the things of God is an act of glorious rebellion.

That being the case, I encourage all to rebel this St. Valentine’s day. Make the holidays holy again. Whether you eat chocolates or drink wine or go on a date or have a meal with friends or stay at home, sanctify the day by doing these for the glory of God. There is truly no other reason to do anything at all, because there is no reason that anything exists except His love.

Blessed be the God of love.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. — 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 (KJV) 

This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. — John 15:12-14 (KJV)