If you've been in a store lately, you probably know that today is Valentine's Day. Although in many ways it has become (or, I might say, degenerated into) a Hallmark holiday, it actually has a measure of legitimate historical origin.  Its name comes from St. Valentine, a Christian who was martyred during the onerous reign of Claudius, a Roman emperor in the third century A.D.  Over the years, as Rome and its splendor faded into history and the Middle Ages began, it morphed into a day associated with love and romance.  
     Commercialism aside, Valentine's Day is still a good day.  What harm can come from thinking about love?
     Valentine's Day is a good day for us to think, again, about how and why we love.  So many of us struggle to be loved, so many of us look for love, as the saying goes, in all the wrong places, and so many wonder, as perhaps singer Linda Ronstadt did decades ago, when we will be loved.  Not one of us does not appreciate, in some way, the love of another human being.
     Tom Vincent was a hermit who lived on the side of California’s San Gabriel Mountains’s 9,000 foot Mt. Baden-Powell for over 50 years.  A recluse, he made every effort to keep people away, sometimes firing his rifle at anyone who dared approach his habitation.  One day, however, Tom became very sick, so much so that he could no longer live on his own.  As it turned out, he was dying.
     Fortunately for Tom, the local postmaster, the only person with whom he ever talked, learned of his illness and took him down the mountain to a hospital.  After a few weeks, Tom died, the postmaster still at his side.  He didn’t die alone.  For some brief moments, Tom knew love.
     As you remember Valentine's Day, think about Tom.  Think about love.  And think about from where, in a world of impersonal chemical and material origin, love could possibly come.
     Think about the essential and transcending love of God.