Happy Valentine's Day! Today, like every other day, is one to celebrate the love we have for everyone in our lives – with or without romance. Love itself comes in as many forms as there are flavors in a ten-pound box of chocolates. So, understandably, it can take a lifetime to fully understand Love. For me, fabulous writings helped in my education in the virtue’s many forms and possibilities – The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, Love and Responsibility by Pope John Paul II, and The Interior Castle/ The Mansions by Teresa of Avila, to name a few. But if the kids in your lives are asking for an answer to “What is love?” those books might be a little heady. For each of the following understandings of what love really is and can be, Pauline Kids has books that gently teach them.

Lesson: Love is more than a feeling. It is practicing the virtues that Jesus taught us through simple, everyday acts: forgiveness, kindness, sharing, patience, joy, thankfulness, caring, trying our best, honesty, bravery, and faith.

Book: Growing in Love

Lesson: Love is making choices that put another’s needs before our own.

Book: Shine: Choices to Make God Smile

Lesson: Love is the mutual emptying of self to fill another – a constant flow of giving and receiving between one another. We have this love relationship with God and can tap into it with prayer.

Book: Between You & Me God: Prayers by Catholic Kids or Teen Prayers by Teens

Lesson: Love is being fully and unconditionally present.

Book: Adoring Jesus with the Holy Father

We also wish you a happy Feast of Saints Cyril and Methodios. These two men showed their love for the Gospel and Church by creating the Glagolitic alphabet and acting as missionaries to Eastern Europe.

How will you show your love this day?