“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand.
What do a passionate employee, a renowned artist, a romantic couple, a united family, a soldier, and an advocate have in common? The answer is short but far from simple: love. Love for work, love for one’s craft or trade, love for family, love for a special someone, love for country.
Love keeps the world going round and fuels us to be the best version of ourselves. It brings forth feelings of happiness and inspiration, brightening our lives with affection and admiration for another person. Valentine’s Day is celebrated just for this wonderful feeling and experience, a global commemoration of love and a day for couples to show love and appreciation for each other.
May this prayer for Valentine’s Day join us and our significant others on this lovely day as we commemorate our love and care for each other, bringing our relationships to the Lord for His blessing and guidance.
Valentine’s day prayer
Loving God,
My sins are many while my payments are few, and still, You arranged for me to meet the very person who has made me see life in color. My trespasses are great, but Your love is greater. For the rest of my days, I will continue to praise Your Name for each blessing in my life, and even until my voice grows hoarse, my hair turns gray, and my body has lost its strength, I will honor Your Name.
I ask for Your blessing for my relationship with the person who has captured my heart. Your love has touched me in the most marvelous of ways, and now I see it in the eyes of my beloved. I don’t know how much time I have on earth, but I hope that I will be able to spend every second of my life cherishing the person I hold closest to my heart.
I pray that Valentine’s Day will bring more intimacy, passion, and appreciation into our relationship and that we will continue to discover more and more about each other with each passing day. I understand that it will not be easy–after all, love is never meant to be easy. Anything easy will crumble quickly in the face of the smallest trials, so I pray not for an easy relationship. I pray for a complex relationship, full of its fair share of misunderstandings and even arguments, but one that is sturdy, true, and based on the most solid and most wonderfully unifying foundation: You.
With all my heart, I hope that every day will be as beautiful and full of love as Valentine’s Day and that each morning will bring a new opportunity for both of us to reciprocate our love for each other.
Short prayer for Valentine’s day
Heavenly Father,
This Valentine’s Day, I seek Your divine blessing for my relationship with my significant other. May our love endure the trials that life has prepared to strengthen our feelings for each other. I hope that what started as stolen glances and lovely feelings will turn into a lifetime of shared happiness and joy and that we will grow together as we worship You. May we continue to discover aspects of each other’s personality just as we discover new wonders that You prepared for us. May each day be filled with more love than the last.
Amen.
The Word of God
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NRSVUE
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.
1 John 4:16 NRSVUE
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
John 3:16 NRSVUE
Intercessory prayer to Saint Valentine
Saint Valentine,
You are a symbol of love and romance, the patron of those who bind their hearts and feelings to another. Celebrations of love have been hosted in your name because of your sacrifice and dedication to preserving the most endearing connection among people.
This beautiful feeling that we share is far from perfect, and I admit that it is flawed, often polluted with misunderstanding, jealousy, and our own insecurities that have seeped into the cracks, threatening to crumble our love for each other. In days of heartache and misunderstanding, give us the wisdom to not make any rash decisions without consulting God’s divine counsel first. Strong emotions may threaten us in times of arguments, but I pray that He will grant us calmness when dealing with problems and that He will encourage us to work hand-in-hand in solving problems, always considering each others’ well-being in mind.
I pray that our relationship will be full of love, light, and laughter, that we will spend many days holding each others’ hand, an allegory to what we hope to be a lifetime of shared adventures through trials and challenges. I beg you to help keep the flame of our love bright and burning no matter how many years pass or how great the obstacles are. I pray that our love for each other and for God will endure.
Saint Valentine, may your life story be a lighthouse for our love, lighting our path through the darkness of the sea and guiding us as we traverse all the challenges that come to test the strength of our relationship. Most of all, I pray that both of us will not lose sight of the one true person who binds us together: the Mighty God. He was the reason why we met, and He shall be the reason why we stay together, the reason that our love will burn brighter with each passing year, despite the devil’s temptations.
On this joyful day, may you touch everyone with love and compassion and fill them with kindness, a reminder of the greatest act of love: Jesus Christ’s blood sacrifice on the cross to pay for our sinful debts and to buy us a chance to live a happy, eternal life in heaven one day.
You have been the steward of lovers for so long, and I hope that you will hear my voice and join me in a conversation with the Lord. Saint Valentine, pray for us.
Further reflection
Love has taken many forms and has been diversely portrayed in the media. Oftentimes, it is painted as a source of tragedy and a magnet for sin, drama, and troubles. But what does the Bible say about love? According to 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, love is patient and kind, and it does not have a hint of jealousy, boastfulness, arrogance, rudeness, and resentfulness. The passage further paints a beautiful picture of what it truly is: a beautiful experience that brings hopeful dreams that endure.
