PENANCE AND LOVE

This is year can be one of the most enthralling, memorable and love enhancing St. Valentine’s Day in 70 years.  That is the last time that St. Valentine and Ash Wednesday had to share the same day.  If we are smart, we will use it for all that it is worth.

SOME PEOPLE (certainly not you) will see this as a mighty inconvenience.  Decisions have to be made: Do I show traditional forms of love to the object of my affections OR do I show my respect to my faith and love of God by following the disciplines of the Church that He founded.  The answer is: neither!  It is a chance to shine in both arenas.

First a quick note:  One of the reasons that couples who do not live together or engage in sexual activity before marriage is that they are forced to find more creative and often very subtle ways of expressing to the other their deep love, respect, and admiration when sexual congress is not an option.  Once sexuality enters into a relationship, many of these more subtle yet foundational ways of expressing love gets left at home while its wilder twin parties every night.  

For most couples, there will be a time or period in there life when marital relations are not an option.  How do you express and understand both how to love and how to recognize and BE loved?  If you haven’t had practice at some point in your life at this, it can be difficult to trust and to start.

Well here is a day to find a new, creative, fun, challenging, unique way to show the person you love just how much you love him or her.  Step one: put away your credit card.  It is a day of fast and abstinence so no chocolate and no big fancy dinner.  Corporate America is going to be very disappointed in you.  So what can you do that is different on this day than all of the others that will make it clear to the person that you love that they are more special to you than could ever know?  What can you do besides just buying the traditional Valentine’s junk that will go on sale for half price the day after Valentines - being pushed aside as the bring the St. Patrick Day stuff out?  What will be cherished by the person you love AND show reverence for the faith that you practice AT THE VERY SAME TIME?  This is your day and your year to shine!