Roperos: Costly heartbeat

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

ONE senior citizen-friend commented the other day that, as far as he can recall, he has never heard yet of someone expressing regret about whatever amount he spent on St. Valentine’s Day. He said a man, no matter how poor he may be, spends even his last centavo for someone he loves on this day, and enjoys spending it. And he urged me to watch the faces of the young men and women yesterday, and observe them.

Well, having nothing else to do yesterday being now a true-blue senior citizen, I did what my friend suggested. I watched people. And true enough, I noted he was right, and I said so when he called later last night. I remarked that, curiously enough, the couples I saw never appeared to look tired and weary. And I surmised that it was probably because they were all primed not only by tradition, but by media, about what to expect now.

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Indeed, our contemporary St. Valentine’s Day is a celebration of a more refined outlook on love and a means of expressing the same human emotion in the more acceptable material terms, regardless of whether it makes the notion of love convertible into material profits for some. There is, for instance, the admonition of the Church to the health department to refrain from distributing condoms on the occasion.

Then there is what to me is a most noble way of honoring the memory of St. Valentine.

The Police Regional Office 7 yesterday, decided to sponsor the church wedding of 20 police officers and their partners. A number of the couples have lived together for some time, but due to financial constraints, they were never able to have a church wedding, only the civil wedding. The PRO 7 spent some P162 thousand for the love celebration that included cocktails at the camp canteen after the wedding at the camp’s St. Ignatius Chapel.

If you ask me, I think it was a jewel of an idea for the PRO 7 high officials to sponsor the church rite for the police couples that cannot afford the more costly way of expressing their love for each other. It has always been the dream of Catholic couples to have a church wedding, if only to have their future family receive God’s blessing.

To quote one of the couples: “We planned to wed in church, but due to financial constraints, we were not able to do that.” I am sure that the particular couple speaks for many of the 19 others.

And for that matter, many of the couples who celebrated Valentine’s Day yesterday may have experienced the pinch of the cost paying homage to the “lord” of love. But no matter the cost, it is what brings forth the experience of feeling the noblest of human emotions that makes life worth living through.

Hence, no matter the cost, who was it who said that “love is what makes the world go round”? He was perhaps, never so right, don’t you agree, too?