Being Single on St. Valentine's Day

Here's a humble confession for me to make:  I have never had a Valentine.  Not once.  And many people in my position would become very bitter about the holiday because of that fact.  However, in my opinion, Valentine's Day is one of the best holidays out there!  But I have heard it said SOOOOO many times that Valentine's Day is just a Hallmark Holiday and that we shouldn't need a holiday to help us to remember to tell people that we love them.



But so what?!  You're really going to let someone dictate to you how to celebrate Valentine's Day?  Are you really going to be one of those people?  If you don't like it, then do something else.  But don't NOT celebrate love just because Hallmark is making a pretty penny off the day.



Love should be celebrated every day, that's true.  So why would we purposefully not celebrate it on Valentine's Day?  You know who wins when you do that?  Satan!  That's right!  If he can get in your head and take your attention off of love, then he wins that battle. 



St. Valentine was a real human being, who truly believed in love (God is love), who truly believed in the Sacrament of Marriage (which is a Sacrament, not a legal institution), and he truly did die because he believed so strongly in the necessity of the Sacrament which had become illegal in Rome that he performed marriages in secret, was later caught and killed for performing marriages!  What a tragedy it is that we are so embittered by the holiday now-of-days.  I guarantee that St. Valentine would be heartbroken to know that his name was associated with such hatred.  He died for love.  And sometimes I feel like, when we "hate" Valentine's Day, we martyr him all over again.



I have a lot of love in my life.  I have friends, family, co-workers, teens, volunteers and parishioners at the church I attend/work at who love me and whom I love in return.  And it's good, necessary, and important to show them that love every day, even on St. Valentine's Day.



I refuse to let this holiday make me bitter.  I refuse to be sad simply because I do not have romantic love in my life at this moment in time.  I may not have romance, but I have love.  And I will celebrate that love on this very important day.



Will you be my Valentine?  Will you show me that I'm important to you, and that you love me?  I hope that I can do my best doing just that to everyone I meet today.  Please join me.