Memorial of Saint Cyril, monk, and Saint Methodius, bishop
(Genesis 6:5-8.7:1-5.10; Mark 8:14-21)
Oddly the Church does not celebrate St. Valentine today. Instead, she remembers Saints Cyril and
Methodius, ninth-century missionaries to the Slavic lands. This is not to say that the Church has little
regard for romantic love, much less love in general. Saints Cyril and Methodious showed their love
for God and for peoples by leaving their native land to give Christ to foreigners. Christ is the supreme model of spousal love. He gave his life to save his bride, the
Church.
Today’s gospel gives indication of his sacrifice. Mark writes that the disciples forgot to
bring bread. Amazingly, they still had one
loaf with them in the boat. That loaf is
none other than Jesus himself. Then he
reminds his companions of the double feeding of the multitudes. These miracles were a prefiguration of the
Eucharist in which Jesus gives his disciples his body to eat and his blood to
drink! He did not mean to be ghoulish by
this action but to show his love completed the next day on the cross.
The world exaggerates the importance of sexual love. Today every person is suspected of either playing
out her or his sexual fantasies or dangerously suppressing them. We Christians offer the world a critical corrective. We proclaim Christ crucified as the measure
of real love – romantic, fraternal, or extended to foreigners.
