Valentine's Day: a reflection on choosing (to) love

To state that Valentine's Day is a minor holiday for me is to overstate the importance I attach to the day. I suppose taking a day to celebrate romantic love is not necessarily a bad thing. That said, I don't mind admitting I have a very complicated relationship with romantic love. You see, as a young man, most of my "love" was unrequited or even flat-out rejected. Let's just say I was never a ladies man of any sort. That's alright because, frankly, I never wanted to be one.

Oddly, these experiences, painful as they were during my adolescence, enabled me to be friends with women. Frankly, some of my best friends, even now, are women. I am always puzzled by people who insist that men and women cannot or, more importantly, should not be personal friends. I disagree heartily. Besides, I am not so vain as to think all women are magnetically attracted to me, not by a long shot! Of course, this also holds true for my male friends who are gay. Nonetheless, as I moved into my twenties, began my university studies, and became Catholic, I more or less gave up on "love."

Then, just as I was on the verge of entering the Dominican House of Studies in Oakland, California, I met someone. This someone, oddly enough, was interested in me. Yes, me. It was a very disorienting experience. Like all important things in my life, this conundrum was not resolved quickly. For the next two-plus years I teetered between joining a religious order and entering into the sacrament of matrimony. At one point, I broke off my relationship, determined to pursue the former.

The difficulty I had discerning arose from the fact that I was faced with the choice between two very good things. I remember how the answer came. Late one night, as I studied, my mind drifted. It dawned on me that I was free to decide. It was my choice. In retrospect, I am not sure why I thought there is one choice right for me and the other one wrong. Even slightly more whacky was the thought I had that somehow, someway, God would make clear to me, crystal clear, which was right and which was wrong for me.

Looking back at it all nearly thirty years later, there was no wrong choice, even for me. I must say that being married and being a parent, neither of which comes very naturally to me, making me mediocre at either when I am at my very best, have probably been a better school of love for me than religious would've been. I think I would've taken to life as a member of a religious order with an active apostolate like a duck to water. My relationship to married life, on the other hand, is more like that of a fish to dry land.

I am glad I chose what for me is the more difficult path. I have no doubt that Christ has been with me, especially in my self-recognized failures. Helping me with the aid of his Holy Spirit to love others, my wife, my children, like he loves me.

My diaconal vocation is not a consolation prize for not choosing priesthood and religious life. On the contrary, my vocation as a deacon arose organically from my prior participation in the sacrament of matrimony. I was pretty far into diaconal formation before I committed to being ordained a deacon. I am a much better deacon for being a husband and a father than I would otherwise be (not that I am a great deacon- but I do take my vocation seriously).

Anyway, I wish you all a happy liturgical memorial of Saints Cyril & Methodius (Saint Valentine did not make it onto the liturgical calendar after the Second Vatican Council).

What else would our Friday traditio for today be but Ol' Blue Eyes singing "Love and Marriage"?