If You Hate Valentine’s Day You Should Click on This

The roses, the chocolate, the trashy lingerie on sale for half-off. America makes a sickeningly bigger deal out of Valentine’s Day with each passing year.

As the season of love approaches, we are forcefully confronted by its heavily commercialized, overly-sexualized shell which fools many into thinking there is something more substantial within. I’m not convinced, and you aren’t either-maybe it’s why you’re reading this. The un-restrainable and immeasurable has been contained and quantified in generic phrases printed onto candy hearts, teddy bears, and Hallmark cards, among others. Love is being morphed into a shadow of what it once was.

But there can be more to it. Almost a century ago, C.S. Lewis offered a refreshing insight into four different types of loves which illuminate the different facets of God’s infinite desire for us. Among them we find Eros, or sexual desire–not the animalistic sexual drive shared with lower creatures, but a desire for union with another human being—another soul—like our own but infinitely far away. So says Lewis:

“Without Eros, sexual desire, like every other desire, is a fact about ourselves. Within Eros it is rather about the Beloved.”

This is a profound mystery of our nature. It is easy to see how a day to celebrate this originated, despite its being watered down and changed over the years.

BUT we must not stop here, and that is the other big mistake we make. Eros is also useless if it is not ordered to a higher love, Agape. It is calm and peaceful in its selfless cherishing of another person, whether it be lover, parent, friend or son. It is the closest to the Divine we can approach on this earth. Eros ignites the flame, but Agape keeps it burning through the hardships and suffering of life. It imitates God’s infinite love—how Christ loved us “to the very end” as He endured the torment, the scourging, the nails, the cross. St. Valentine was martyred for this same Man, and his name marks the day for a reason. Agape remains when all else has passed away. Eros is nothing without fruition in this higher form of love.

My point is this: maybe this year we should remember we have been given an extraordinary gift in love for one another. Recalling that all love must be subordinate to a Divine love which is the source of—and encompasses all—the loves which we encounter on our journey might just give us something truly worth celebrating.

So don’t kill me. But Happy Valentine’s Day, friends.