After school this week, my seven-year-old son asked me who the “Valentine’s Day character” is. To which my eight-year-old knowingly responded, “Cupid!” From one angle, he’s not wrong. Our Americanized version of this holiday is a cultural celebration of romance. But historically, Valentine’s Day was a religious celebration of a love that runs much deeper than romance. On February 14, the third century Christian saint Valentine was martyred for his faith.
The details of St. Valentine’s life are somewhat murky. He was a bishop—or maybe a priest—who was supposedly imprisoned by Roman authorities for officiating secret weddings during a time when marriage was forbidden by the emperor. This costly commitment to marriage might be one reason why his memory is associated with romance. But Valentine himself was likely celibate, as was common for Christian leaders in the early church. While in prison, the story goes, he befriended his jailer and healed the man’s young daughter of blindness. Before his execution, he wrote a farewell letter to the little girl and signed it, “from your Valentine.”
Valentine’s story shows us that love comes in many forms. Romantic love is worth honoring, but not to the denigration of singleness. And the highest form of love is any kind that gives its life away for the sake of others. I wrote about two people who modeled this kind of love in my life here, and how their witness (spoiler: it’s my parents) showed me more about the gospel than anything else I experienced growing up. I commend it to you because I am so proud of their story.
And I encourage you—whether you are married or single, widowed, divorced, engaged, young, old, celibate, or uncertain about your romantic future—I encourage you to celebrate Valentine’s Day because it is for you. All of us are recipients of a love-to-the-end (Jesus’!) and all of us are called to be conformed to it. Maybe for you that’s as a parent, or a friend, or a spouse, or a sister. Wherever you’ve been called, don’t underestimate the power and purpose of your ministry in someone else’s life. You might become, in the mystery of grace, a St. Valentine to them like my parents were to me.
Hannah+