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

[Aquila]

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.

[Aquila]

For most of us in the West, we don't really consider Valentine's Day in light of any historic Christian tradition. To most of us Valentine's Day is more of a Hallmark holiday of chocolate, romance, and fancy lingerie. But for many Christians in other parts of the world, this is a holiday with deep liturgical and spiritual meaning. It is a time to reflect and pray for marriages, relationships, one's love life, and close friendships. It is also a day to contemplate one's dedication to the Christian faith, especially should one be faced with persecution.

[Aquila]

And here in the attached pictures below we have the tomb and a relic of St. Valentine. While this might appear macabre to our modern sensibilities, ancient Christians often preserved and venerated the remains and belongings of beloved Christians and Christian leaders. These artifacts became known as holy relics. It was believed by these ancient Christians that touching, venerating, and praying before these ancient relics imparted divine power and grace. Miraculous healings and experiences are often attributed to these items by believers in this tradition. This tradition is based on how these early Christians viewed the following texts:

Elisha's Bones:

2 Kings 13:21 (ESV)
And as a man was being buried, behold, a marauding band was seen and the man was thrown into the grave of Elisha, and as soon as the man touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood on his feet.

The woman with an issue of blood:

Mark 5:25-29 (ESV)
25 And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, 26 and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse. 27 She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. 28 For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” 29 And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease.

Clothing worn by the Apostle Paul (also known today in many churches as the origin of "prayer cloths"):

Acts 19:11-12 (ESV)
11 And God was doing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, 12 so that even handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick, and their diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.

[Aquila]

So, there's the scoop on the history behind the Christian tradition associated with Valentine's Day.

If you and a significant other are celebrating your love today, I wish you the best.

Here's a rather nice prayer I found on the internet for couples. May God bless and keep you, as your love flourishes under the power of divine grace and mercy.

A Prayer for Couples

Dear God,

Please make of our relationship a great and holy adventure.
May our joining be a sacred space.
May the two of us find rest here, a haven for our souls.

Remove from us any temptation to judge one another or to direct one another.
We surrender to You our conflicts and our burdens.
We know You are our Answer and our rock.
Help us to not forget.

Bring us together in heart and mind as well as body.
Remove from us the temptation to criticize or be cruel.
May we not be tempted by fantasies and projections, but guide us in the ways of holiness.
Save us from darkness.

May this relationship be a burst of light.
May it be a fount of love and wisdom for us, for our family, for our community, for our world.
May this bond be a channel for Your love and healing, a vehicle of Your grace and power.
As lessons come and challenges grow, let us not be tempted to forsake each other.
Let us always remember that in each other we have the most beautiful woman, the most beautiful man, the strongest one, the sacred one in whose arms we are repaired.

May we remain young in this relationship.
May we grow wise in this relationship.
Bring us what You desire for us, and show us how You would have us be.

Thank you, dear God, You who are the cement between us.
Thank You for this love.

Amen.

[Aquila]

Here's a video on the origin of Valentine's Day:

[Aquila]

I thought this was cute, so I decided to share it. It's a cartoon for kids to help explain the tradition of St. Valentine's Day. They try to be non-sectarian and the story is told with much innocence. This story emphasizes not only Valentine's faith and courage, but the legend about how Valentine and the jailor's daughter, Julia, fell in love during Valentine's imprisonment.

If you think about it, Valentine's story is quite a romantic tragedy. The government prohibits marriage, so a priest (Valentine) defies the government and marries couples secretly to honor God. The priest is arrested and imprisoned for defying the emperor's edict. The jailor has Valentine tutor his daughter while Valentine is incarcerated. Then the jailor's daughter (Julia) is healed of blindness and she comes to faith in Christ. She continues to visit the priest and they fall in love. Valentine refuses to admit wrong doing and refuses to deny his faith before the emperor. As a result, the priest is sentenced to death. And even more tragically, the night prior to the execution Valentine and Julia are not allowed to see one another. The next day, Valentine is speedily executed, before Julia can see him on last time. The only thing she has is a love letter, and Christian admonition to remain faithful, signed, "Your Valentine".

Yes, much of this is legend. That means that there are embellishments and perhaps even a blending of different stories. But I have to admit, it is a great traditional story and the lessons it presents are heart warming.

[Esaias]

Valentine's Day is just another pagan tradition. Folks can google all the info they can digest. Of course, the whining about muh feelz and whut diff'rence does it make will be incessant, as usual. Meanwhile, the real world keeps on turning. Hope nobody is counting on their pension plan to be working in ten years.

[houston]

Leave it to Aquila to peddle the state church

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by Esaias

Valentine's Day is just another pagan tradition. Folks can google all the info they can digest. Of course, the whining about muh feelz and whut diff'rence does it make will be incessant, as usual. Meanwhile, the real world keeps on turning. Hope nobody is counting on their pension plan to be working in ten years.

Excellent point.

Yes!

The Roman church did indeed use the Feast of St. Valentine to offer a Christian alternative to the pagan festival of Lupercalia (which began on February 15th not the 14th) in the hopes of "Christianizing" the culture.

[Aquila]

Originally Posted by houston

Leave it to Aquila to peddle the state church

No, I stated my intentions in my first post:

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.

Like it or not, I'm right. Many Apostolics are buying their wives and sweethearts Valentine's Day cards, chocolates, gifts, etc. today. Why not look at a little history regarding why this is a part of our culture? And why not accentuate the "Christian" elements of it instead of being so cynical and allowing the wholesale secularization of our society?

Think about it... if we REFUSE to even mention the Christian elements of our society's cultural history... how can we complain that everything is so secular???