St. Valentine

We celebrate the feast day of St. Valentine on February 14th. However, one look at a store calendar will tell you that the day is no longer called St Valentine’s Day but now is known as Valentine’s Day. This popular holiday is also celebrated in many other countries around the world and is the second largest card giving holiday after Christmas.

Did you know that the Roman Catholic Church no longer officially honors St. Valentine? His feast day was removed from the Roman Catholic Calendar in 1969! It is not forbidden for Catholics to honor St. Valentine themselves, but he no longer has a feast day on the official Catholic Calendar. So, why would he be removed from the calendar if his feast day is so popular around the world?

St. Valentine’s feast day was named by Pope Gelasius I in the year 496. It appears that there were 3 men named Valentine who were martyred. One Valentine was a priest, one was Bishop of Terni and one lived in northern Africa. Tradition says that the priest and the bishop were beheaded on February 14th, but all of them were martyred for living out their Christian faith by helping other Christians.

The middle of February was celebrated as a Roman festival dedicated to a god of fertility. Pope Gelasius may have wanted to give people living in that time a different hero to look up to and chose St. Valentine. No one knows now which of the three Valentines the day was named for or even if it was named for all three of them. It either wasn’t written down or the records were lost. Due to the confusion and lack of information, he was removed from the calendar.

So look at a Catholic Calendar today and you won’t find St Valentine listed on February 14th but instead you will find it is now the feast day of St. Cyril, the monk and St. Methodius, a bishop who were brothers from Thessalonica and missionaries to the Slavic people.

Mary Farah Dickhut, Mount Tabor Center