Since this is a month of love (Valentine’s day on Feb. 14), I would like to wish all of you a month filled with love - love for our God and love for each other. Interestingly enough, Lent will begin with Ash Wednesday on the 25^th of this month, which is also another opportunity for us as Catholic Christians to profess our love for the Lord through all the Lenten observance. I think it’s really cool that on Valentine’s Day, we get to profess "love" to those dear to us, on a natural level. Then, in less than 2 weeks later, on Ash Wednesday, we begin the journey to profess "love" for God and for one another, but this time, on a spiritual level. To me, Lent is an occasion to express love and gratitude for the love we receive from God. In recognizing how much God loves us, we want to respond to His Love through the concrete acts of repentance, fasting, abstinence, praying, etc. so that our hearts will be more in unison with God’s. I pray that we all will try our best, and with God’s grace, to live the Lenten journey to the fullest and be ever closer to Jesus, our most loyal friend, Lord, and Redeemer.

Since love fills the air in a special way this month, I’d like to share with you an article I found from the "Lifeteen" website which I think will benefit you a great deal on the topics so Love, Sex, and Faith. I hope you will enjoy reading it and find it helpful in your search for true and meaningful love.

Take care and God bless,

*smile, you are God’s valentine!

LOVE LOVE LOVE. or is it. SEX SEX SEX! In this special feature, Jim Beckman explains the depth of the Church's teaching on sexuality, love, and our faith. Plus, you'll find out what Pope John Paul II has to say about sex.

One Wednesday morning, everyone filled the streets to hear about a guy raging about SEX. After that one SEX talk, people were curious. After one year of SEX talks, people were fascinated. After five years of SEX talks, Hugh Hefner had surrendered. We have a new king of sex: Pope John Paul II!

The Pope’s talks are compiled into the world's most provocative love story: "The Theology of the Body." What Pope John Paul II wrote has transformed the way Christians, and non-Christians, view sex. In it's simplest form, the Theology of the Body breaks down into two basic questions: "Who are we?" and "How should we live?"

To answer this question, we have to go back to the Bible, to when we were created. Look at Genesis 1. In the Creation account, we are told that humankind was created in the "Image and likeness of God, male and female He created them" (Gen. 1:27). Who we are, how we were made, what we look like (even naked) is in the image and likeness of God.

Christianity does not reject the body, or look at the body as bad. Look at the Catechism, #1015: "The flesh is the hinge of salvation. We believe in God who is creator of the flesh; we believe in the Word made flesh in order to redeem the flesh, we believe in the resurrection of the flesh, the fulfillment of both the creation and the redemption of the flesh."

The Catholic faith is a very physical, and even sensual religion. It is through the body, and the bodily senses that most Catholics experience the faith. The "stuff" of the material world allows us to more intimately encounter God: Baptizing with water, anointing the body with oil, eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ, the laying on of hands, confessing with our lips, and even the "one flesh" reality of marriage. It is in these "human" things, these "bodily" things that we encounter the divine mystery -- creation mirrors the Creator. Our bodies are NOT just vessels for our souls, but a way to understand and experience God.

We know that we are ALL created in the image and likeness of Christ. When you really believe that, you will see the dignity within each person, simply because they are. If you do not see this dignity, it is impossible to live right: loving others as God has loved us.

When you know you are created in the image and likeness of God, you realize that through you, others can experience the Light of Christ. The foundation of every Christian teaching and every moral principal is LOVE, and not just love as we would understand it, but to love as God has loved. So, to truly understand how we are to live, the Pope challenges us to look at how God LOVES. Let's look at it. What are all the ways the scriptures explain how God loves?

Artist and Art:
Jeremiah 18 shares a vision of the potter and the clay, or 1 Peter 2:5 speaks about the whole church being a building and we are living stones. We are indeed a work of art, God's art. The analogy can be drawn to greater depth by seeing ourselves as the "work" of His whole life, with which He will take endless trouble to perfect.

Shepherd and Sheep:
We are God's people.the sheep of His pasture, He is the Good Shepherd, His sheep know His voice. These are just a few of the many passages in Scripture. This is a slightly better analogy than artwork, because we are capable of feelings and responses, unlike a piece of art. But still, it does not tell the full story of God's love.

Father and Son:
The prayer that Jesus taught us, the Our Father, we now pray with the fervency of children. We are the children of God. He has adopted us. Look at Romans 8:15 and Ephesians 1:4-5 and 1 John 3:1. Then there is the Son, and His love for His Father. In Philippians 2, we read that through His obedience, we all become adopted sons and daughters of the Father. This is probably the most powerful analogy so far, but it too is not the strongest. In this one, we are still subject and obedient to God, as a son is to a father.

Husband and Wife:
And so here we come to the supreme example that the scriptures give us of God's love, that of the love of husband and wife. Now, in the third millennium, our society's view of love is so warped, it's hard for us to believe God's love for us could be anything like that. It is a scary analogy, full of danger and risks. but there it is, in Scriptures, all throughout the teachings of the Church:

- Jer 2:2, Ez 16:6-15: Israel's false wife, and her heavenly husband

- James 4:4-5: St. James calls us adulteresses when we turn away, pursuing a friendship with the world.

- Eph 5:27: The Church is called the "bride" of Christ

- Matt 22: Heaven is called the eternal wedding feast

Because God uses spousal love as an image of His love for us, then let's look at how the Church defines marital love. And the best way to look at that is to look at the marriage vows:

"Have you come here freely and without reservation to give yourselves to each other? Will you love and honor each other as man and wife for the rest of your life? Will you accept children lovingly from God?"

Break this apart and you have four key requirements of the marriage vows:

Free - Have you come here freely?

Total - Have you come here without reservation?

Faithful - Will you love and honor each other for the rest of your life?

Fruitful - Will you accept children lovingly?

Living this out is tough, but worth it. When a couple shares love -- free, total, faithful, and fruitful -- they experience a deeper love of God.

This makes sense for marriage, but what about the rest of the planet you aren't married to?

We are called to love everyone (family, friends, enemies.even your school janitor) with this sacrificial, unconditional love. The foundation of every relationship has to be love, freely given, with no strings attached. Love that is total, with nothing held back, no reservation or self-protection. Love that is faithful, true to the other person, honoring them and their dignity as a human being. Love that is fruitful, giving life to the other person, never taking away.

Only when we understand that we are created in the likeness of God, and that God is love, are we able to understand sex at all. Because right now our view of sex - shaped by the world - is so WARPED. They tell us we can find satisfaction in earthly things, that we can quench all desires with acts of lust. But sex outside of a sacramental marriage - oral sex, masturbation, pornography, homosexuality, sex with animals, sex with apple pie - none of these can speak the language that our bodies were created to speak.

Let me wrap this up with a passage from Romans 12:

It is up to you to discern the authentic from the counterfeit. What will you decide? How will your body reflect the image and likeness of God? How will God's love for you effect your love for those around you?

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*This article was reprinted from the " Life-Teen.org" website.