SAINTS IN A YEAR: ST VALENTINE AND THE SACREDNESS OF HUMAN LOVE

Fr Billy Swan

When I was growing up in the 1980’s, there was a dream that most of us had of meeting the right person, falling in love, settling down, getting married and having a family. Somehow, that was the goal and the norm of how life was meant to work out. There was a natural connection between love, marriage and family that we took for granted and that would always be there.

The trouble with this norm was that it didn’t leave much room for those who, for whatever reason, did not fit into this vision of things ought to be. And so, to cut a very long story short, we changed the narrative on marriage. The problem today is that for an increasing number of people, the dream of settling down and getting married is more unlikely. Marriage and fertility rates in Ireland are at an all time low. The natural link between, love sex, marriage, children and family has been broken with an increasingly cynical attitude towards marriage as an ideal, something to strive for and desire.

The feast of St Valentine celebrates the sacredness of human love and encourages us not to lose faith in marriage and family as something to pray for and believe in. St Valentine was a Roman priest and martyr, who ministered to Christians who were forbidden to marry or practice their faith, under the tyrannical rule of Emperor Claudius II. In defiance of the Emperor, Valentine celebrated the marriage of Christians, a ministry which cost him his life.

St Valentine’s witness dared to promote the practise of Christian marriage at a time when it was counter-cultural to do so. He inspires couples to do the same today as a sign of hope for the future.

Here in Ireland, the feast of St Valentine is celebrated in the Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in White Friar St in Dublin, which houses his relics (see above). The Shrine is visited throughout the year by couples who come to pray to St Valentine, asking to intercede for them and their lives together. Every February 14th, the reliquary is moved to the high altar for special Masses, where engaged couples receive a "blessing of the rings".

A book in the church is filled with countless wishes addressed to the patron saint of lovers, while a steady stream of locals and visitors alike pray there for help in their dream to find the love of their lives. Many of these prayer requests reveal the light of hope in the hearts of people who know their need for love and companionship. Consider the following such prayer, once written in this book: “God has someone in mind for me, and I obviously haven't met him yet. So, I just hope that Saint Valentine will assist me, that I will find him” said one female visitor. Another added: “I just prayed to find the right one, and I believe I will be led to him when the time is right”.

For people like these and the many couples who come to have their rings and relationship blessed, it is wonderful recognition of their participation in the mystery of love whose source is in God.

In ‘The Joy of Love’, the late Pope Francis taught that: “promising love for ever is possible when we perceive a plan bigger than our own ideas and undertakings, a plan which sustains us and enables us to surrender our future entirely to the one we love”.  He continues: “when a man and a woman celebrate the sacrament of marriage, God is, as it were, ‘mirrored’ in them; he impresses in them his own features and the indelible character of his love”.

On the feast of St Valentine, may couples contemplating marriage it as a vocation that is noble and beautiful, a way of life that trains our gift of freedom to choose the good, to be responsible and to serve. May cynicism never extinguish the fire of hope that burns in the hearts of the young and not so young, that someone else is capable and willing of loving them for who they are, just as God does.