The More Loving One

On the feast of St. Scholastica, we celebrate a triumph of will between siblings, of sorts. Scholastica was granted a favor from God—a storm that prevented her brother, Benedict, from leaving her and returning to his monastery, thus enabling them to spend more time together—because, as St. Gregory the Great noted in book two of his Dialogues, “she loved more.”

How would the world be different if we competed to be the one who loved more instead of the one who had more money or more power? In his poem The More Loving One, W. H. Auden notes,

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

The paradox of a competition regarding who can be the most loving is that no one loses, for love begets love. As our societal celebration of love—St. Valentine’s Day—approaches, may this be our mantra: Let the more loving one be me.