"In life - In love; In death - In love"

This post is brought to you today by _ "In Love" - by Jon Foreman off of "The Fall EP"


I was in the grocery store the other day last week shopping for food an hoping to get a St. Valentine’s day card for my parents and my sister.

What annoyed me (yet was in keeping with the law of supply and demand) was that there was every kind of card under the sun for romantic couples and not enough for the other people we love. I literally could find only one card apiece for both parties, which may speak to my procrastination but come on!

The commercialization of holidays really only bugs me when the holidays in question are major Christian feast days (see Christmas and Easter) and the goods to be sold obstructs the God to be honored.

I didn’t feel this way about St. Valentine’s day till recently. Being a man, Valentine’s day was not a day of heartache, dread, anticipation or any other emotion as I’ve overheard from so many sisters – it registered on my scale about as much as Canadian Boxing Day – outside of the candy of course and the fact that the holiday is waaaaay too pink - I generally don't notice it.

However, there I was looking for a card and wishing I had time to make them instead of buy them. There is something even more personal about a handmade one than one purchased at a store. Which got me thinking about the very first Valentine ever given and the reason for this holiday to begin with.

My history is spotty but from what I gathered ad hoc. There were many Valentines in Rome and apparently many who converted to Christianity. From what we collectively discern St. Valentinus/Valentine was a Christian priest who among other duties, performed marriages for young Christian couples in which the man was part of the Roman army. According to legend, St. Valentine was arrested and jailed as Christians were still indiscriminately and arbitrarily persecuted. He was said to be a favorite of Emperor Claudius who held frequent audiences with the prisoner. His fatal mistake, apparently, was trying to convert the Emperor to Christianity, for which he was beheaded. Read more here for a better take on his life.

That said, we probably know more about Valentine from his execution. As legend has it, before he died, Valentine famously wrote a letter to the jailor’s daughter and signed it “From your Valentine” - we don’t know if the letter was romantic or not or even if their relationship was likewise(I think it was platonic), but here we are today – Hallmarked up and looking for cards, candies and flowers while those of an entire gender not romantically engaged sit in some sort of dissatisfaction.

I might be calloused but I look back upon the legend and see that St. Valentine’s life and death had very little to do with romance and more to do with true love. In C.S. Lewis’ wonderful book entitled The Four Loves, he systematically introduces and explains the four different types of love expressed in the Greek and found in the New Testatment: storge - affection, love between family members; philia – friendship; eros – "being in love"/romantic love and agape – or charity which he describes as the love God has for us because it is not prompted. Wikipedia has a more in depth summary here - check it out!

I bring this up because We can look at St. Valentine’s acts of service towards the young couples and his other priestly duties as philia, or even storge. We can look at his friendship with the emperor that way too, and with some imagination we can speculate that his affinity for the jailor’s daughter was romantic.

Ultimately however, what lead him to his death and inspired his life was agape – the love for God that taught him how to love his fellow man.

I didn’t intend to critique Valentine’s day as much as point out what we often miss about the life and death behind it. This is a martyr’s day after all. Jesus once said to his disciples – Greater love has no one but his, that a man should lay down his life for his friends. Which is precisely what Christ did and what inspired his followers, like Valentine, to be willing to do as well.

Judging by his actual life’s example, should St. Valentine’s Day be a day of sacrifice or entitlement?

In the lectionary today we had St. Paul’s famous summary on love found in 1st Corinthians 13

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing
but rejoices in truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.”

Before St. Paul started writing about love in chapter 13 he wrote - "And I will show you a still more excellent way" to introduce love. A more excellent way indeed that we we know or are used to.

Think about St. Paul's words in the context of St. Valentine. Did he resent being imprisoned or did he endure it? Did he despise the petty emperor that called on him frequently to talk yet depriving him of his liberty, or love him so much that he even dared to share the saving grace of God with him through the gospel of Christ? Did he get consistently irritated at his position in that stinking jail and resentful of his fellow prisoners and captors - or did he care to get to know them, even up to the jailor’s daughter – establishing a friendship and being kind enough to leave her a good by letter before he was executed – most likely to help comfort her?

The example we see in St. Valentine, we saw first in Christ. It does my heart well to be mindful of that, especially with Lent coming up this Wednesday.

Yet, I feel that the negative feelings that latch on to people from this holiday have less to do with a lack of feeling romance or eros, and more with a lack of feeling agape. As my sister told me - as I am an ignorant man - its just good to have a day when someone does something for you just to declare you are special. I'd hate to give the typical Christianese answer "Insert God here, problem solved." We serve a God who looked at Adam and said, "it is not good for man to be alone." However, we should not be like the rest of the world that ultimately lives without hope, that makes romantic love a god in place of the God who made romance, and from whose charity all expressions of true love comes.

All that to say that God is ultimately the model Augustine followed when he wrote that letter to the jailor's daughter. He let everyone from soldiers, newlyweds, emperors, criminals and jailors daughters know that they are someone special, and more importantly, God loves them and gave them the capacity to love him. Not the easiest cure for what ails us but it is the truth and the truth sets us free from a whole host of things.


Happy Valentine’s Day and God bless! I hope the Lord helps me to love Him and you in a more meaningful and Christ-like way today and always.