St. Valentine, who is this mysterious saint and why do we celebrate this holiday?  

The history of Valentine’s Day 

The month of February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine’s Day, as we know it today, contains residuals of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. Presently, the Catholic Church recognizes at least three different saints named Valentine or Valentinus, all of whom were martyred One legend declares that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men; his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret.When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.  Other stories, suggest that Valentine may have been killed for attempting to help Christians escape harsh Roman prisons where they were often beaten and tortured.  They claim that Valentine actually sent the first ‘valentine’ greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl, who may have been his jailor’s daughter, who visited him during his confinement. Previous to his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed ‘From your Valentine,’ an expression that is still in use today. These legends, certainly emphasize his appeal as a sympathetic, heroic, and, most importantly, romantic figure. It’s no surprise that by the Middle Ages, Valentine was one of the most popular saints in England and France.  While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘christianize’ celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.  To commence the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at the sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome, were believed to have been cared for by a she-wolf or lupa. The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification.The boys then sliced the goat’s hide into strips, dipped them in the sacrificial blood and took to the streets, gently slapping both women and fields of crops with the goat hide strips. Far from being frightened, Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year. Later in the day, according to legend, all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn. The city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and become paired for the year with his chosen woman. These matches often ended in marriage. Pope Gelasius declared February 14 St. Valentine’s Day around 498 A.D. The Roman ‘lottery’ system for romantic pairing was deemed un-Christian and outlawed. Later, during the Middle Ages, it was commonly believed in France and England that February 14 was the beginning of birds’ mating season, which added to the idea that the middle of February — Valentine’s Day — should be a day for romance. The oldest known valentine still in existence today was a poem written by Charles, Duke of Orleans to his wife while he was imprisoned in the Tower of London following his capture at the Battle of Agincourt. The greeting, which was written in 1415, is part of the manuscript collection of the British Library in London, England. Several years later, it is believed that King Henry V hired a writer named John Lydgate to compose a valentine note to Catherine of Valois.

How do you say Love 

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Young love is a flame; very pretty, often very hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. The love of the older and disciplined heart is as coals, deep-burning, unquenchable.

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward in the same direction.

Love has no desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires;
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.

-Helen Keller

Love does not dominate; it cultivates.

Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love.

Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.

I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.