John 15:12-13 (KJV) | Prayer With Jesus | Saint Valentine
This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
Account Of The Life Of Saint Valentine
Saint Valentine has become synonymous with love. Historical details of Saint Valentine’s life are sparse, and much of what is known is drawn from legend and tradition. However, the core of Saint Valentine’s story has made a lasting impact on Christian thought and practice, particularly concerning ideals of love, marriage, and sacrifice.
Saint Valentine is believed to have been a Christian priest in Rome during the reign of Emperor Claudius II, also known as Claudius Gothicus, in the third century. At that time, the Roman Empire was engaged in various military campaigns, and Claudius was having difficulty recruiting soldiers. Believing that unmarried men made better soldiers, he issued an edict prohibiting young men from marrying. The emperor thought that marriage would make men emotionally attached and therefore less willing to leave for war.
Saint Valentine, however, did not agree with this decree. He believed in the sanctity of Christian marriage and saw it as a vital sacrament, a sacred bond blessed by God. Despite the emperor’s orders, Saint Valentine continued to perform marriage ceremonies for young couples in secret. According to tradition, he would meet these couples in hidden locations and bless their unions in the eyes of God, despite the risk to his own safety.
Saint Valentine’s actions were eventually discovered, and he was arrested. While in prison, Saint Valentine continued to minister to fellow prisoners and guards. One of the more famous legends surrounding him involves the jailer’s daughter. It is said that the jailer, recognizing Saint Valentine as a man of learning and faith, asked him to pray for his blind daughter. Through Saint Valentine’s prayers, the girl’s sight was miraculously restored, leading to the conversion of the jailer and his family to Christianity.
As Saint Valentine awaited execution, it is said that he developed a deep friendship with the jailer’s daughter. On the eve of his execution, he is believed to have written her a note, which he signed, ‘From your Valentine.’ This phrase, though simple, has endured through the centuries and is now synonymous with expressions of love and affection on Valentine’s Day.
Saint Valentine was martyred on February 14th, around the year 269 AD. He was beaten with clubs and then beheaded, becoming a martyr for his faith and his steadfast commitment to Christian marriage. His relics were later buried on the Via Flaminia, and his name has been honored in various ways throughout Christian history.
Over time, the memory of Saint Valentine has been celebrated in various ways. The association of his feast day with romantic love likely developed in the Middle Ages, particularly with the rise of courtly love traditions. Today, Saint Valentine is honored not only as a patron of lovers but also as a symbol of enduring faith and the power of love to overcome adversity.
Personal Reflection
As I reflect on the life of Saint Valentine, I am drawn into a deeper understanding of love, not merely as a fleeting emotion but as a profound commitment that mirrors the love of Christ. Saint Valentine’s actions, performed in secret and at great personal risk, reveal a love that is willing to endure hardship and face persecution for the sake of others. In a world where love is often portrayed as something easy and self-serving, Saint Valentine’s life challenges me to embrace a love that is selfless, sacrificial, and rooted in faith.
Saint Valentine’s commitment to the sacrament of marriage, even under the threat of death, teaches me the sanctity and seriousness of the vows I take in life, whether in marriage or in my broader relationships with others. His willingness to defy the emperor’s unjust laws for the sake of God’s commandments calls me to consider how I, too, can live out my faith courageously, even when it is difficult.
As I meditate on Saint Valentine’s story, I am reminded of the words of Jesus: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (John 15:13). Saint Valentine’s martyrdom is the ultimate expression of this truth. His love was not confined to those closest to him but extended to all those he served, even at the cost of his own life. In this, I see a reflection of Christ’s love for me, a love that led Him to the cross for the salvation of the world.
Prayerful Meditation | Prayer To Saint Valentine
Saint Valentine, witness to the power of love, I turn to you in prayer. You understood that love is more than words or feelings; it is a profound act of faith and commitment. Help me to love others with the same selflessness that you showed, willing to make sacrifices for the sake of those I care about.
Guide me to see beyond the superficial aspects of love and to embrace its deeper meaning. Teach me to be patient in my relationships, to act with kindness, and to forgive readily. In moments of difficulty, may I remember your courage and draw strength from your example.
As I reflect on your life, I ask that you intercede for me before God. Help me to grow in my understanding of love, that I may live out my faith with integrity and compassion. May I always seek to serve others, just as you served those in need, and may my actions reflect the love of Christ in the world.
Saint Valentine, patron of love and fidelity, pray for me, that I may love others with the same depth and devotion that you did, and that my life may be a testament to the enduring power of love.
Amen.
‘Death,’ says His Grace, ‘throws it all apart. For we are not as we should be. Faith requires our adjustment to God’s truth. God’s triumph in a very real sense requires in us the loss of our everything. Which, as with Mary at the other end of Jesus’s life, is God’s truth.’ The Gospel reading is of John 11: 1-45, which is a long passage, and His Grace’s homiletic theme commences in textual wilderness. Our brokenness – in this place – a family home. Our faith, our doubt, our death… The irruption – death, doubt, fear – within our precious scenes and our most intimate places. Our domesticity. His Grace speaks from the chair, as is a bishop’s prerogative, and says: ‘So much is obscure in the Gospels. We’re always reaching through them. We’re never there. Really, we never are. Our knowledge, our understanding, of the Gospels is never complete, and with each reading comes a new revelation. There are always new riches there. Just as there are between all of us, between myself and you. The Gospels are living texts. This is a part of the conversation we have with our own Christianity. It is a part of who we are in our relationship with Jesus. We are in this sense always on the brink. ‘So yes, there is plenty that doesn’t seem to make sense. As one of the order of bishops, we would be lying if we said that weren’t the case. They are not easy texts to encounter, if by that word we may signify something more than a superficial glancing off against, but rather a profound search for the word of God. The Gospels are written by people who had their own ideas, and often didn’t know what had really happened. Luke is quite explicit on this point. His is an investigation, from the explicitly claimed point of view of an historian, rather than that of a first-hand witness, who attempts, so he says, to set out an orderly account, out of the chaos, the sheer muddle, that has been handed down to him. It is possible to imagine Luke researching and composing his account after many years, when there has arisen a desire to know what exactly happened, and this implies a certain call to faith and certain demands of historicity, to historical exactitude. So in these different ways, the people of the first years of Christian faith are in the dark. There is also a decisive need to define the life of Jesus. And people didn’t get Jesus. The whole meaning of Christianity is only now beginning to take root throughout the composition. So much needs to be evangelized. The light shines almost in tentative fashion like that first star, which drew the wise men from the east to our Lord’s cradle. ‘John’s is widely held to be a very late Gospel. There are others who say that John’s Gospel might have been the first to acquire its true shape, because it most fully expresses Jesus, as we know him to be, as members of the Catholic Church. We don’t really know when any of this is being written, but we get a feel in John of a Gospel refined over many years, through a community. So there’s a lot going on there that I’d like you to think about. ‘What I would like to suggest to you is that, while within the Gospels we are often confronted with clues, guesswork, stories that have been handed down through so many people, and so in this sense we might find ourselves to be in the wilderness, this is the very desolate space itself to which we must give ourselves in order to experience Christ’s full redemption in our lives. I suggest it is for God’s glory that we do so. ‘As we become aware of ourselves, in this seminary, we find ourselves in a very secure, comfortable setting, and there are signs of Easter everywhere. Within the very fabric of these buildings, our Lord is risen; our Lord lives. But now this is our Lenten journey, where death enters, where death breaks us. We are to ride into Jerusalem in triumph, and then we are to be utterly broken, all hope gone, our hope extinguished. And really, I suggest to you, it is only by inhabiting this thought, as if we don’t know Easter is there, that our new life can follow, just when we have given up all hope, when every promise that Jesus made to us seems to have been cancelled. ‘And here now we have the story of Lazarus. I should like to suggest to you that we have a very powerful call now. In our very comfortable space, our domesticity, with all this comfort, where so very little might seem to happen each day, so it might seem to you, there is a disturbance within all of this comfort, and that is a disturbance within ourselves, and that is our call to Jesus. I think it is correct to say that our most comfortable places break in the light of Jesus from the inside, in order that we may take the necessary steps to be with Jesus. ‘Faith is not comfortable. I think that we can all receive the message of the rolling away of the rock from the tomb of Lazarus to say something of vital importance to ourselves concerning our openness to God’s love. The rock we roll away can come in all sorts of guises, but we know when we are blocked, and I firmly believe if we are truthful then we know where those blocks might be. ‘Next Sunday, which will be Palm Sunday, we process as it were to Jerusalem, to begin our Holy Week. Now as I speak to you we are on the brink. Even now, I suggest it might be very good for all of us to lay aside what we think we know, to fall apart a little, and so […]
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