Love is hard to pin down. A recent study of married couples tied loving and being loved in to ideas of happiness, contentment and wellness.  Which, confusingly, all turn out all to be different things. The New Testament has four ways of thinking about love; as affection, friendship, charity and erotic attraction.  Clearly, it can’t easily be defined.

St Paul had a go at describing love.  ‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

Now I can’t speak for you, but I know that I am not patient, or always kind.  I can be envious, boastful and proud.  I’m selfish, I speak ill of others and I get angry. I bear grudges, sometimes tell lies, and am despairing, faithless and cowardly.  Not all of them all the time (I hope) but you get the picture.  I’m not especially bad, mind you – just normal.

If I’m normal though, and love is that complicated, then Valentine’s Day seems pretty bleak. How can I be loved if I fall that far short of being loving?

But think again about how Paul describes love.  He unleashes a majestic, rolling litany of qualities that have little or nothing to do with the cloying, saccharine sweetness of a commercial Valentine – which, in reality has practically no relation to love, actually.

The truth is that we were made (as Sinatra once sang) to love and be loved, by God and by each other, not once a year but every day.  And love shows itself in hope, patience, compassion, selflessness, humility, integrity, honesty, good humour and a thousand other ways that are not bad cards or teddy bears.

So being normal isn’t all that bad. Real love cuts through our many failings in affection, friendship and kindness – as well as in raw physical passion. And as a result, we still love each other, despite everything. Happy Valentine’s.

I’m not sure I should have been so hard on Valentine’s Day. There is still a beautiful mystery about falling in love which is different from Paul’s ‘majestic, rolling litany’ and which is definitely worth celebrating.