14 February 2020 | St. Valentine | Menlo Park, Calif. 

On a beautiful hike in the California foothills, we grapple with a very important question: When it comes to obscure third-century martyrs, what’s love got to do, got to do with it? Also, this week’s Shakespearean comedy about love and marriage, The Taming of the Shrew, brings our conversation back to Ephesians 5, which proposes an answer to a perennial question: What should our love for one another look like when “we love because Christ first loved us” (1 Jn 4:19)? Mutual submission, total commitment, self-gift without remainder: it’s all here. Even the chocolates and flowers. 

Opening music: “Hark, all Ye Lovely Saints,” composed by Thomas Weelkes, performed by the King’s Singers, dir. Christopher Bishop, 1974. All rights reserved.