Deacon’s Corner

Will the Real St. Valentine Please Stand Up?

February is the month we celebrate love and romance. Greeting card stores are filled with cards expressing mushy sentiment and ridiculous poetry. Flower and jewelry shops market their wares as the perfect expression of love. Valentines’ parties are held in almost every grade school classroom where valentines are exchanged with classmates. The high schools host their annual Sadie Hawkins dances, where it is the girl’s responsibility to ask the boy to go to the dance. And here at Sacred Heart, we celebrate couples who had milestone wedding anniversaries at our special Marriage Day Mass. And why February, when the temperatures plummet during the coldest month of winter? And just what does this all have to do with an obscure third Century Saint?

So, who was St. Valentine? Perhaps the most remarkable fact about St. Valentine is that no one really knows any facts about him at all. In early Christian history, there were several martyrs named Valentine, and scholars still debate the true identity of the St. Valentine who inspired the holiday. In fact, the Catholic Church has recognized at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, and all were martyred. The legends attributed to the mysterious saint are as inconsistent as the actual identification of the man.

By one particularly popular account, Valentine was a third-century Italian bishop of Terni, a city north of Rome, who was put under house arrest in the residence of a Roman judge named Asterius for practicing the Christian faith against the command of Emperor Claudius II. Undaunted by persecution and punishment, Valentine spoke to the judge often about Jesus Christ, until the unbelieving judge challenged the bishop to cure his blind daughter to prove the authenticity of his God. Valentine placed his hands on the girl’s eyes, and they were opened. Asterius quivered with wonder and asked Valentine what he should do in light of such a miracle. Valentine ordered him to destroy all the false gods in his house and be baptized.

After the conversion of Asterius’s whole household, as they stood in the rubble of idols, Valentine was summoned to appear before the emperor, and though Claudius found Valentine charming, he ordered the bishop to be executed for standing firm in the faith. And so, Valentine was beaten with clubs and beheaded outside the Flaminian Gate on February 14th, in the year 269, but not before he wrote a note of comfort to the girl whose sight he had restored, signing it, “From your Valentine.”

Here’s another legend: This one has Valentine as a Roman priest giving aid to Christians suffering persecution under the reign of Claudius. Claudius determined that single men made better soldiers than married ones, and so he outlawed marriage for young men as he prepared to draft soldiers into his army. But Valentine began marrying couples in secret, allowing the husbands to claim exemption from serving in the military ranks of the emperor. Valentine was discovered and dragged before the emperor, and, though he made out winningly with Claudius, he was sentenced to death for refusing to budge an inch from his faith.

And so the stories run, too numerous to catch them all, though we may try. So, whether he was one man, or two, or fifty; whether he was a priest or a bishop or a doctor, or from the south of Italy or the north; or whether he healed the blind daughter of a judge or a jailer, Valentine is one of those strange saints for whom the only thing we can be sure of is that he is in heaven—which, to be fair, is the most important thing about him, whoever he was.

The romantic nature of Valentine’s Day may have derived during the Middle Ages, when it was believed that birds paired couples in midFebruary. And while the holiday’s origins are rooted in Christian tradition and martyrdom, it has evolved into a day for expressing love and affection to one’s romantic partner, friends, and family by exchanging cards, gifts, and gestures of kindness.

St. Valentine is the Patron Saint of happy marriages, love, lovers, engaged couples, bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, plague, travelers, and young people. He is represented in pictures with birds and roses and his feast day is celebrated on February 14.

So, there you have it… everything that you ever wanted to know (or not) about St. Valentine and his feast day. I pray you can all spend St. Valentine’s Day with someone you love.

Deacon Mike