Good, better, best,
Never let it rest.
Until your good is better,
And your better is best.
St Jerome saluted the transforming power of love in these lines. The natural experience of fair love is always good. A committed and magnanimous love is better. The best is redeemed love – liberated from sinfulness and sustained by the Sacraments, in accord with Jesus’s mandate, “Love one another, as I have loved you.”
St John’s Gospel reveals this expansive and elevated dimension to natural affection. Through Jesus’s power of transformation, chores can become “laughing places”; sickness, loss, and adversity can likewise become moments of heaven – or at least Purgatory – when Grace is allowed to enter our human realm.
February was named for Februa, the ancient Roman festival of purification. Before Jesus Christ’s sending the Holy Spirit, the pagan world had only intimations of the sovereignty of love’s well-spring and dominion. In the Christian life, even amidst decay and suffering, our natural longing for love is invited to partake of something greater: perpetual and sustainable Grace infused in Love passed along from one generation to another.
In the bleakness of February, the mystery of suffering hides the very seed of love with recurring events of heart-wholeness and health restored. Things are transformed for those who make God’s will for His kingdom their first concern. St Raphael, whose name means “God heals,” can be our guide to understanding this journey of transformation. This great archangel was sent by God to heal the earth after it was defiled by the fallen angels.
February opens with the Presentation of the Lord Jesus; simultaneously, Foundation Day of the SDC is 2 February; then follows St George Preca’s birthday on 12 February. Usually, the purification of Ash Wednesday and Lent begins in February. Signals of recovery and cleansing from sickness permeate the dates of the month. Now a shrine of healing miracles, the Lourdes apparitions began on 11 February 1858. Also celebrated in February is the shipwreck in 60 AD of St Paul, St Luke, and their companions in Malta. The most popularised date is St Valentine’s Day on 14 February, when happiness is activated by the exchange of candy hearts and loving words. Regrettably, its more commercialized version devolves into triviality, but it need not do so.
All our human loves, relationships, and states of being can find peace and happiness, as at the first miracle of water changed to wine. Whatever our state in life, the natural loves are transformed by our blessed Lord Jesus, who saved the best wine to be served last at the nuptials at Cana.
The 18th century English poet and visionary, William Blake wrote of the interconnection of all our human loves in these few poetic lines:
I sought my God and my God I couldn’t find;
I sought my soul and my soul eluded me;
I sought to serve my brother in his need, and I found all three;
My God, my soul, and thee.
Ruth D. Lasserter
Friend of the SDC
Indiana, US