It would be great if Valentine’s Day became a day to celebrate the meaning of love in our lives. Perhaps our media and political system could take a day off from fighting and dividing and practice love, compassion and empathy.
On this day, I ask if there is love in my life, I hope there is love in yours.
Sometimes I’ve bought Maria some funky thing for Valentine’s Day, but we aren’t giving one another gifts this year.
We decided we don’t really need Valentine’s Day, we love one another all of the time. We don’t need to be reminded. Love is a good thing to celebrate, the country could use some love, might one day pause to honor love and practice it.
Love has fled Washington, but it has not left my life, or the hearts of so many people I know and have come to know.
The day is about love, but the story of the man who inspired the holiday is neither pretty or loving.
Tomorrow, the Round House Cafe will deliver a special Valentine’s Day lunch to the Mansion at 11:30. The event is sponsored by the Army Of Good.
I will be there to help serve, I much enjoy doing that, I get to know the residents in a particular way. The menu is Lasagna, along with cakes and cookies. I’m going to tell the residents about the legend of St. Valentine, and also read them some poems I plucked out off the Internet today.
I wondered about St. Valentine tonight, I decided to check him out. I was a bit surprised. Christian historians say he was real, that he was a Roman priest during the reign of the Emperor Claudius, who is notorious for his bloody persecutions of Christians and the church around 200 A.D.
Claudius has prohibited the marriage of young people based on his belief that unmarried soldiers fought better and harder than married soldiers because married soldiers might be afraid of what might happen to their families if they died. Claudius also permitted polygamy and forbid the church and its priests to promote a monogamous marriage.
The idea of encouraging Romans to marry within the Christian Church was Valentine’s mission. He was caught, tortured and imprisoned for performing marriage ceremonies against Claudius’s orders. One of the men who judged him was called Asterius, says the legend who had a daughter who was blind. St. Valentine prayed with the girl and her eyesight returned. Asterius converted to Christianity as a result.
In the year 269, Valentine was sentenced to a three-part execution of a beating, stoning, and decapitation because of his commitment to Christian marriage.
What Valentine – now “St. Valentine” means to the church, said one Catholic historian, “is that there comes a time where you have to lay your life upon the line for what you believe.” In his own belief, he did stand for human love and sexuality.
It’s interesting to me that on Valentine’s Day, as on Christmas, we celebrate the holiday but most of us forgot or never knew its real meaning. Here, we think of flowers and cards and expensive dinners out.
I think I’ll share this story with the Mansion residents, I suspect they will like it. I found some poems about friendship they will like, I think, and also family.
I will tell them they are love, and remembered, and known. I will tell them they are not forgotten or left behind. I will point to all of the banners and cards and gifts and cakes and decorations sent by the Army Of Good, and remind them that there are so many people out there care about them.
I will wish them a Happy Valentine’s Day and perhaps pause for a moment or two to honor St. Valentine, who died for an idea he believed in.
Love lives.