Celebrating Valentine’s Day with True Love
Photo courtesy of Edgar Chaparro
From handwritten notes, to gifts from the heart, each year some 62 percent of people in the U.S. celebrate Valentine’s Day. The Feb. 14 holiday, which originated from the Catholic Church as a feast in 496 AD, has long been designated as a day of expressing our love.
This year, as we celebrate with our loved ones in traditional and new ways, let’s remember that true love — like our Heavenly Parent — is unique, eternal, and unchanging. It is practiced daily with patience, kindness, sacrifice, and forgiveness. Below is an excerpt on the ideal of true love shared by True Father in his autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen (2009).
Excerpt:
True love is a heart that gives and gives and wants to continue giving. True love is a love that even forgets that it already gave love and gives love again. I have lived my entire life intoxicated in such love ... At times, the path of love was so difficult that my knees buckled under me, but even then I felt happy in my heart, dedicated to loving humanity...
Nine years after my encounter with Jesus, my eyes had finally been opened to the true love of God...Then I talked about true love, God-centered love, which should guide the mind. I said that true freedom can be enjoyed only when we have a clear understanding of ourselves based on a foundation of true love and are able to exercise self-control...
Marriage is the path by which a man and woman become as one, create new life, and establish true love. Through marriage, a new future is created: Societies are formed; nations are built. God’s world of peace is realized with married families at the center. It is in the family that God’s Kingdom of Heaven is brought about with true love...
True love begins with God and comes to us from God...If a husband and wife are bound together in true love and they build an ideal family, this will connect directly with the world...The family is a bundle of love...True families create true people. God’s Will is to bring about a world in which love is made real, and the family is the place where God’s love overflows...The family is the place where we receive true love and learn true love.
True love is a value that cannot be learned any place other than in the family...When children who are raised in the warm love of their parents go out into the world, they will care for people in difficulty in the manner they learned in their home. People raised in loving relationships with their own brothers and sisters will go into society and share their caring hearts with their neighbors. People raised in love will look upon each person they meet in the world as a member of their own family. The starting point toward a true family is the heart of love that treats all people as family and shares true love with them.
You can give the gift of True Father’s autobiography available here.