Love Over Everything
a reflection on Pastor Jeremy’s Sunday sermon
What’s the History of Valentine’s Day?
“The Real St. Valentine’s Day: A Martyr for Marriage in a Hostile Empire” by Steve Umbrello
On February 14, Catholics honor St. Valentine, martyr, beheaded on the Flaminian Way in Rome around 269 AD under Emperor Claudius II. Legends swirl: a priest secretly marrying young couples despite the emperor’s ban on soldiers wedding (to keep them unattached killers). While those tales borrow from other acts and bloom late in history, the core rings true—a faithful servant of God defying Caesar to uphold divine order.
Valentine knew that the State doesn’t own the family. Marriage isn’t a contract for convenience; it’s a sacrament mirroring Christ’s unbreakable love for His Church, forging spouses into “one flesh” through grace that perfects their bond, demands fidelity, and sanctifies them for eternity. He died witnessing this truth amid persecution.
Fast-forward: the sacrament is under siege today. No-fault divorce, redefinitions, cultural erosion—echoes of empire. Sister Lucia of Fatima warned Cardinal Caffarra: “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family.” Spot on.
Ditch the chocolates and cards. Celebrate the saint who bled for God’s design. Pray for strong families.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13 :: The Gift of Love
13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,[a] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly,[b] but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
In this letter Paul was addressing the fractured church of Corinth, exhorting them to love one another as the body Christ. Love forbears. Love lives on eternally. Love rises above all chaos and division. The body provides a beautiful metaphor for the way a community should function. Diverse members work together to accomplish a unified objective.
In English we overuse the word love. Love appears as Chesed חֶסֶד in Scripture, as Agape ἀγάπη in the NT. Agape marks our church. G-d doesn’t do agape, He is agape. Through kenosis G-d loves His Creation. Cruciform love defines His relationship with us.
Note to readers: Through the Cross, G-d was not paid a ransom, death was paid the ransom. To suggest G-d demanded a ransom from Jesus represents committing violence to the Trinity. I reject the domestic violence suggested by the theory of penal substitutionary atonement that G-d demanded payment from Jesus for our sins.
Paul preaches that a church must operate as a body and members must love each other in a kenotic agape way, so that the surrounding community feels the love overflowing toward them. Love enables us to experience G-d, it can feed our faith. Without Love as a central focus of our journey as a Christian, we fall short, we miss the point.
Without love, our actions become noise.
Knowledge becomes pride.Faith becomes performance.Generosity becomes self-glory.Even sacrifice becomes empty.Love waits to speak, love forbears, love engages with kindness, love does not boast, love does not envy. Boasting puffs us up (think of a balloon which bursts when filled with too much air). Envy obliterates gratitude. Love does not attack the character of others, love does not engage with arrogance, love does not dominate—it often means choosing what others want over what you want for yourself. Love provides the glue that holds a community together.
The story of 6 blind men and the elephant reminds us that multiple truths can hold at once. When we listen to one another with a view to understanding (as opposed to retorting), we can bring unity to the group.
Kenneth Chafin :: "Love makes us polite to those we are closest to, for love is never rude."
Love takes no offense, it doesn’t respond with irritability, it gives the benefit of the doubt, it responds with grace. Love doesn’t keep a ledger of wrongdoing. When we cleave to our resentment we poison our soul. Resentments held in our heart harden the heart—this has a destructive effect.
Follow Jesus and do not hold hatred in your heart.
Love releases all record of wrongdoing, it forgives. Throw the scorecard away, and embrace grace. Love doesn’t celebrate destruction. Love doesn’t rejoice or glorify wrongdoing, it rejoices with Truth. Truth leads to freedom and life. Rejoicing with truth often means accepting the reality we will face persecution and ostracism. Love cares about the good over temporary approval. Love bears, believes, hopes, and endures all things.
“Love rejoices with truth.”
Now, in our human, flesh-based existence, we look through a mirror darkly, meaning the human condition distorts our vision — we don’t see things as they are in Jesus, we see them as we are, through the lens of our ego.
Jesus calls us to live through and with kenotic love. What if we thought of the Church as the hands and feet of G-d, rather than a platform for our own self glory or a way to show off our moral superiority or goodness? We gather to worship G-d, and beyond being seen at church service, we unite to serve and care for each other and those around us, from birth to death.
“Christian life begins as something simple and clean: God and ourselves. But it doesn’t stay that way. Clutter crowds us. Pollution messes us up. We lose our way and get frantic. We get tired and wonder if this is all there is to it.
Then we come together as a community. We worship God and greet each other. As we do this, we get the story straight again about the God who makes us, the Christ who saves us, and the Spirit who works in us to repeat our Lord’s words and deeds among our neighbors in the world.” — Eugene Peterson
Love means self-sacrifice, it means humility, it means honesty. You cannot love whilst you lie or whilst you cower with the liars for fear of persecution, alienation, or other reprisals. Many think they can love whilst upholding lies and enabling liars — you cannot. Love rejoices with and stands on Truth. Love demands Truth.