The Love & Courage of St. Valentine
On Tuesday we celebrated the Feast of St. Valentine, a third-century Christian martyr. The two most popular hagiographies about his life locate him in third-century Rome. They say he was a leader in the Church (either a bishop or a priest) who ministered to and supported Christians in a time of severe persecution under the emperor Claudius Gothicus.
One story tells how, while under house arrest, he engaged in conversations with Judge Asterius (the judge who was overseeing his captivity). These conversations ultimately led to the conversion and baptism of the judge and his entire household (family members, servants, and all). The judge later released the other prisoners he was tasked with supervising.
After his release, St. Valentine continued to evangelize and was again arrested. He was brought before Claudius, who initially liked him — until St. Valentine tried to convert Claudius, at which point Claudius became angry and ordered his execution. When St. Valentine refused to apostatize, he was beaten with clubs and beheaded.
Other than two details, there is little in these stories that connects St. Valentine to what his feast day has become in contemporary Western society. In one telling of the story, he sent a note to Judge Asterius’s daughter before his execution and signed it “from your Valentine.” In another, he illegally performed marriages for Christian couples, a move that was perhaps more political than romantic: by marrying these couples, he not only defied Claudius’s order against doing so, he also protected the husbands from conscription into the pagan emperor’s army (a significant inconvenience to Claudius, who needed soldiers).
These days, of course, St. Valentine has been largely forgotten in the celebrations that occur on his feast day. His memory has been eclipsed in the popular imagination by heart shaped candy, dinner reservations, extravagant gifts, pink or crimson dresses and ties, and paper Valentines spangled with superheroes or puppies taped to candy and exchanged among schoolchildren. For single people, Valentine’s Day can be quite lonely, a reminder that they have not yet “attained” the relationship status that would allow them to participate in the festivities. If any of us actually remember St. Valentine on his feast day, we likely do so in the manner of the pilgrims who visit his relics to ask for help in their romantic plights.
How, then, might we reclaim the memory of St. Valentine on his feast day? As I familiarize myself with his story this year, I am perhaps most struck by his astonishing example of courage. In the face of violence against his person, St. Valentine demonstrated steadfastness and bravery I find incomprehensible. It is humbling and frightening to imagine being called to exhibit it.
Christian martyrs, from the first century until now, suffer as they do for the sake of love. Many early Christians possessed what rings to modern ears as a nearly insane desire for martyrdom; many of them quite simply hungered to die for Christ. They ardently wanted to enter Christ’s death with him in a very literal sense, so that being united to his Passion they might also be united with his glory. I remember feeling disturbed by the works of some early martyrs I had to read in college, among them St. Ignatius. Their writings expressed desire for martyrdom in a manner that seemed almost romantic in its intensity and abandon.
The example of martyrs like St. Valentine is challenging, even cognitively distressing, to those of us Christians who live in societies whose laws protect religious freedom. Their examples directly confront many of the values we take for granted as our rights: legal protection for religious practice, physical comfort, the absence of pain or torture, the ability to practice our faith publicly, the ability to live a long life with the people we love. While these things are not necessarily wrong to want, the examples of the martyrs remind us — story after story after story — that they are not everything, and are in fact far less important than we are inclined to think.
The stories of the martyrs also compel us to ask a genuinely painful question: Am I supposed to want that? To want to be tortured? To want to die an untimely, violent death for the sake of Christ?
I don’t know. But certainly we are called to love Christ with comparable dedication and intensity. Certainly we ought to be willing to die such a death, should it be asked of us.
Lent is drawing very, very near. Soon, we will be called to acknowledge and confess our sins and to walk through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday with our Lord. Lent gives us the opportunity to prepare for this by submitting our desires and our loves to the crucibles of silence, prayer, and fasting.
For forty days, we will be called to examine our loves, to ask in which direction they tend. Who (or what) do I love and want most? Is it Christ? Is my love for him such that I will follow him anywhere his goodness might lead — even unto death? If the answer is no, we return to our prayer. We plead with Christ to make himself known to us, to make himself near, to deepen and intensify our love for him until it becomes the very center of who we are.
Beautiful as it is, love can be quite painful. Christlike love is holy, and it burns away the parts of us that are still beholden to disorder or sin. We are creatures created by Love, for love. We are made to live in loving union with God and others. But because of sin, true love is unfamiliar to us. When God answers our prayers and remakes us into loving creatures, the experience of love upwelling in us and moving us to action is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, even painful.
The word “martyr” means “witness.” And the witness of St. Valentine shows us that love for Christ and our fellow men can make us so courageous that we will become capable of walking through fire to uphold its integrity and truth. Perhaps this, then, is what Lent is for: to be so broken, opened, and emptied that we long only for Christ, and want the love that fills us to be only his love.
In Lent, then, may we learn to long for Christ. May we be made again into loving witnesses after his likeness.