When I was a kid, there was a little rhyme everybody chanted to tease whoever they thought was experiencing a childhood crush. It went like this:

(Boy's Name) and (Girl's Name), sitting in a tree,

K-I-S-S-I-N-G.

First comes love, then comes marriage,

Then comes (Boy's or Girl's Name) in the baby carriage!

While it wasn't very kind, it was standard and universal fare at elementary school, as were the giggles and red-faced responses it elicited.

I'm not sure that rhyme would work very well these days. For one thing, our society has managed to separate love from engaging in physical affection. The quality of the relationship is mostly irrelevant to the level of intimacy it may include. But we've also disconnected marriage from love. In our age of sexual liberation and enlightenment, there's no need for the "marital act" to be marital at all. Love doesn't have to "come first," and marriage doesn't need to come at all. In fact, love, sex, and marriage can be freely pursued -- or not -- in any order that suits us. Even more, no baby carriages need ever result.

There's no denying that marriage has largely fallen out of favor. It's not as popular as it was when our parents and grandparents were young. But in addition to it no longer considered necessary, marriage isn't seen as particularly appealing or desirable. It seems that, from a societal vantage point, marriage's best days are long gone.

When we talk about the "end" of an institution, the usual practice is to dissect, document, and decry its decline. But if we actually want to do something about the place marriage has in our society, we might be better off exploring the institution's other kind of "end" -- that is, its purpose. St. Valentine's Day gives us a perfect opportunity to do so.

As Catholics, we number marriage among the sacraments. That is, we view matrimony as a gift of divine grace capable of making us holy. Couples who marry draw closer to Christ. Through their vocation, they embrace and become an image of the love God has for marriage, which is not simply a limited accommodation for sexual desire. It is the fireplace made for the kind of love that brings warmth, light, and, yes, children into the world.

Marriage is the image of God's self-giving love. Catholics don't marry for the sake of personal fulfillment. In fact, we don't marry to receive the love we want but to give the love we have. Couples commit to one another freely, each making a gift of themselves to the other.

It is deeply fitting that weddings occur at the altar, the place where Christ Jesus gives us his Body and Blood. But if we look deeper, we can see that marriage is itself an altar, the place where husbands and wives are called to lay down their lives in sacrificial love for one another. We do this knowing -- as St. Maximilian Kolbe did -- that there is no love without sacrifice. All that marriage entails -- from the daily grind to life's most difficult decisions -- teaches us that the language of love is the language of the cross. Living marriage as a vocation shows us that things we would not otherwise be willing to take on or give up become offerings when we do them in love. In time, they can even become joys.

Candlelight dinners and weekends away are lovely gestures. But as cards, flowers, and heart-shaped boxes of candy are exchanged, let's remember that the call to love is a call to be like Jesus. The kind of love we all long for and need is the love that created us, the love that is God himself.



- Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a Catholic convert, wife, and mother of eight. Inspired by the spirituality of St. Francis de Sales, she is an author, speaker, and musician, and provides freelance editorial services to numerous publishers and authors as the principal of One More Basket. Find Jaymie on Facebook or follow her on Twitter @YouFeedThem.