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St. Valentine’s heart

BY JD FLYNN – 14 FEB 2023 – VIEW ONLINE →

A reliquary containing the heart of St. Valentine. Credit: Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church.

Hey everybody,Tuesday is February 14, and you’re reading The Tuesday Pillar Post.First, a bit of a mea culpa. I told you last week about St. Apollonia, an Egyptian martyr who died after suffering some dental distress – and I told you that last Tuesday was the customary date of her feast. I was wrong.See, I knew that St. Apollonia’s feast was February 9, and I thought last Tuesday was February 9. It wasn’t. It was February 7, and I spent the whole day thinking it was the wrong date.I now feel pretty silly about that, but I figured I should own it, rather than pretend that embarrassing faux pas never happened — especially since Ed brought it to your attention in his Friday newsletter. What are friends for, right?Unlike last week, I am absolutely confident that I know the date today, and what saint is customarily observed today.It’s the feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, of course!But we’re not going to talk about them right now. Because – while he’s not the memorial on the universal calendar today – I have some cute little cards from my kids telling me that today is St. Valentine’s Day.There are a lot of hagiographies about St. Valentine himself, and competing accounts, so here’s just one version of the man:Valentine was, by some accounts, a third-century bishop who was frequently subject to persecution for his fervent preaching of the Gospel.One popular story says that Valentine was once under arrest in the residence of a Roman judge, and that Valentine began preaching the Gospel to his captor.The story says that the judge – named Asterius – brought to Valentine his blind daughter, apparently telling the bishop that if Valentine prayed over the girl and she was restored to sight, he would do whatever the bishop asked of him.Well, Valentine did pray over the girl, and she was restored to sight. But Valentine, rather than ask to be set free, asked the judge to smash all the idols in his house, to fast for three days, and then to be baptized.The judge reportedly did exactly that, becoming a Christian, and then freeing Valentine and a number of other Christians under arrest. But Valentine was, according to most accounts, arrested again, and executed outside the city of Rome.One story – which seems to have emerged many, many centuries later – is that before he was martyred, the bishop dashed off a quick note of encouragement to Asterius’ daughter, and that he signed the note “Your Valentine” — thus launching the romantic custom.Another story says that Valentine witnessed the marriages of several Christian couples who were themselves also waiting for execution.It is not clear, of course, whether he gave them those little candy hearts with words first.Of course, because my kids needed Valentines to give to their classmates, I had hoped to find some of that martyrology on little cards or candy hearts. We struck out on that effort.But we did come across this cool coloring page, which actually depicts a pretty good amount of the Valentine story — note the broken idols in the background:And, as it happens, if you’re looking for pretty neat Catholic coloring pages for all manner of saint days, this resource looks pretty good.I would caution, before we get to the news, that you be careful with St. Valentine’s Day — one never knows when giving a Valentine might give someone the wrong idea, like it did for poor Ralph Wiggum: May St. Valentine intercede for us. And a bit more on him later.