Showing posts with label Valentines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Valentines. Show all posts
Monday, February 13, 2017
Thursday, February 13, 2014
My Holy Valentine
As a preteen, collecting valentines to line up on my dresser, I would count the cards and sort them and arrange. Valentines from friends were put where I could see them readily; ones from boys I liked were given pride of place. It was not unheard of for a girl to receive two or more valentines from the same young man: a definite sign of not-so-secret love.
"The Bible is a letter from Almighty God to His creatures," wrote Pope St. Gregory.
What a missive! The length of it, the poetry, the repeated declarations of total and absolute LOVE.
"I have loved you with an everlasting love... I am constant in My affection for you." (Jeremiah 31:3)
"Though the mountains leave their place and the hills be shaken, My love shall never leave you." (Isaiah 54:10)
"My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one shall snatch them out of my hand." (John 10:27-28)
I can turn page after page of Scripture and find such love. Love that would suffer and die for me, declaring itself over and over and over - a definite sign of not at all secret Love.
This is Love that deserves first place in my heart. This Valentine's day, I shall (anew) accept it. And I pray for grace to give love in return.
Through prayer, through acts of charity, through aspirations of love and praise, I hope to give Our Lord a number of "valentines"... repeated declarations of a not-so-secret love.
This was originally posted on my blog The Breadbox Letters, 2012
Samuel Melton Fisher painting
Thursday, February 14, 2013
My Name in His Heart
The following is a re-post of what I wrote last year for St. Valentine's Day:
The photo above is one I snapped a few years ago of my favorite tree. When I found the heart-shaped hole in it, I was touched to see where it happened to be located. The "heart" is directly above a spot where I often sat, some years ago, scribbling my first journal notations about what it might mean to live in this world as a cloistered heart.
Coming across this photo in my files, I immediately thought of hearts carved in trees. Hearts made by young men and women intending to signify that their love is permanent. Names inside a heart... linked together by a + . Initials not just scribbled on a piece of paper, but put onto a more permanent object; something expected to last. "I will love you forever," the hearts imply. "I shall carve your name inside this heart, for I do not intend to let you go."
"What will we do," asks St. Francis de Sales, "when, in eternal glory, we see the most adorable heart of Jesus through the holy wound in His side.. a heart in which, written in characters of fire, all of us will be inscribed? Ah! We will then say to the Savior, 'is it possible that You have loved me so much that You have even written my name in Your heart?'"
"See, I have carved your name on the palms of My hands," says the Lord to us. (Isaiah 49:16).
He never intends to let us go. +
(photo copyright © 2011 N Shuman)
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