Happy Valentine's Day! A look at Valentine's Day

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Valentine's Day History

February 14th (Valentine's Day) is historically known as the Feast of St. Valentine. St. Valentine is a beloved Saint, venerated throughout the world by many Christians.

Since Apostolics around the world are participating in the cultural tradition of what is known as St. Valentine's Day, I thought it might be of some value to shed a little light on the history of this festival. The historical, Valentine's Day is the Feast of St. Valentine (Valentinus). There are several different legends about this ancient Christian, and some scholars believe that the legend of St. Valentine might even be a compilation of different legends based on several different individuals. However, for the sake of brevity and simplicity, I'm going to share the generally accepted traditional legend.

Here's a bit of history on this guy that has come to be known as St. Valentine.

Saint Valentine is best known as the patron saint of love and lovers. Many traditional Christians in the more Eastern churches say God worked through his life to perform miracles and teach people how to recognize and experience true love.

This famous saint, an Italian doctor who later became a priest, inspired the creation of the Valentine's Day holiday. He was sent to jail for performing secret weddings for couples during a time when new marriages were outlawed in the ancient Rome.

Before he was killed for refusing to renounce his faith, he sent a loving note to a child he had been helping to teach, the daughter of his jailer, and that note eventually led to the tradition of sending Valentine's cards.

Lifetime: Birth year unknown, died 270 AD in Italy

Feast Day: February 14th

Patron Saint Of: Love, lovers, marriages, engagements, young people, greetings, travelers, bee keepers, people with epilepsy, and numerous churches

Famous Miracles of Saint Valentine:

The most famous miracle attributed to Saint Valentine involved a note that he sent to a young blind girl named Julia who Valentine had befriended. Shortly before he was martyred for his faith in Jesus Christ, Valentine wrote Julia a farewell note. Believers say that God miraculously cured Julia of her blindness so that she could personally read Valentine’s note, rather than just have someone else read it to her.

Valentine signed Julia’s note “From your Valentine,” and that loving note, combined with the memory of Valentine’s support of engaged and married couples in his work as a priest, led to the tradition of sending loving messages on his feast day, Valentine’s Day.

Throughout the years since Valentine died, people have prayed for him to intercede for them before God in heaven about their romantic lives. Numerous couples have reported experiencing miraculous improvements in their relationships with boyfriends, girlfriends, and spouses after praying for help from Saint Valentine to love their romantic partners in the way God would like them to put love in action.

Biography:

Saint Valentine was a Catholic priest who had also worked as a doctor. He lived in Italy during the third century AD and served as a priest in Rome.

Historians don’t know much about Valentine’s early life. They pick up Valentine’s story after he began working as a priest. Valentine became famous for marrying couples who were in love but couldn’t get legally married in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, who outlawed weddings. Claudius wanted to recruit lots of men to be soldiers in his army and thought that marriage would be an obstacle to recruiting new soldiers. He also wanted to prevent his existing soldiers from getting married because he thought that marriage would distract them from their work.

When Emperor Claudius discovered that Valentine was acting outside of Roman government authority and performing secret weddings, he sent Valentine to jail. Valentine used his time in jail to continue to reach out to people with the love that he said Jesus Christ gave him for others.

He befriended his jailer, Asterious, who became so impressed with Valentine’s wisdom that he asked Valentine to help his daughter Julia with her lessons. Julia was blind and needed someone to read material for her to learn it. Valentine then became friends with Julia through his work with her when she came to visit him in jail.

Emperor Claudius also came to like Valentine. He offered to pardon Valentine and set him free if Valentine would renounce his Christian faith and agree to worship the Roman gods. Not only did Valentine refuse to leave his faith, he also encouraged Emperor Claudius to place his trust in Christ. Valentine’s faithful choices cost him his life. Emperor Claudius was so enraged at Valentine’s response that he sentenced Valentine to die.

A Loving Letter Inspires Valentine’s Day Messages

Before he was killed, Valentine wrote a last note to encourage Julia to stay close to Jesus and to thank her for being his friend. He signed the note: “From your Valentine.” That note inspired people to begin writing their own loving messages to people on Valentine’s Feast Day, February 14th, which is celebrated on the same day on which Valentine was martyred. Couples also continued to write one another proposals and love letters, and since marriage was illegal, they would sign these letters, "Your Valentine". This was to confuse any Roman authority who discovered the letters while honoring the memory of the beloved priest, Valentine.

Valentine was beaten, stoned, and beheaded on February 14, 270. People who remembered his loving service to many young couples began celebrating his life, and he came to be regarded as a saint through whom God had worked to help people in miraculous ways. By 496, Pope Gelasius designated February 14th as Valentine’s official feast day.