Saint Valentine’s Day
“Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8).
As for Saint Valentine, patron of all who love and especially of married couples, whose feast we celebrate on 14 February, here is a brief account of his life.
Valentine, or Valentinus, was a Roman priest who lived in the third century AD under the pagan emperor Claudius, who persecuted the Christians in Rome because they did not worship the idols of Rome in his reign.
Unrest broke out in the Roman Empire during this emperor’s reign, and he decided to raise a great army to send to the troubled areas.
So Claudius declared a state of emergency and began gathering strong young men to join his army, trying to attract them with money. But his call met with little response, because the married young men of Rome did not want to leave their families and go to war, and the single young men refused to leave their loved ones and their future life partners, knowing that the war would be long and they might not return.
So the emperor issued a decree banning marriage in the empire and ordered all existing engagements to be broken off.
And so the young men began going off to war in sorrow, knowing they might never return to their homes and loved ones. Then the priest Valentine learned of the emperor’s decision and began secretly inviting everyone to his church and marrying them, pagans and Christians alike.
The emperor then had him thrown into prison, but Valentine did not stop spreading faith in the one God even in prison, openly professing his faith and his pride in the Lord Jesus. He refused to worship idols, telling them they were made by human hands, and confessed his love for the Lord alone. The judge Asterius took him to his house to try him. The judge had a blind daughter; Valentine prayed over her head, asking the Lord, the Light of the world, to give her light, and she was healed. Then the judge believed, together with his wife and children, and he and his household of 46 people were baptized.
The emperor ordered his execution, and so Valentine, who gave his life out of love for Christ and zeal for the salvation of souls, was beheaded on 14 February, around the year 269.
The Church later proclaimed him a saint.
May his intercession be with us.
Note: the Arabic text gave the year 476, but Emperor Claudius II died in 270, and tradition places Saint Valentine’s martyrdom around 269. Several details of his story (the ban on marriages, the secret weddings) belong to legend rather than documented history.
