Pleural Mesothelioma
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Valentine/Cyril/Methodius
On Valentine’s Day you’re asked to buy chocolates, flowers and overpriced cards. You may well ask what Valentine has to do with saints or the sort of love Jesus talks about.
In early days, Romans called one of their gods Lupercus and asked him to protect them from the wolves which roamed the forests. His festival was February 15th when the custom was for the young girls’ names to be written on slips of paper and put in a jar. Each young man drew a slip. The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart for the year.
After Rome converted to Christianity, the church tried to incorporate this festival into Christianity. The old festival was abolished and replaced with St Valentine’s Day, celebrated the day before the banned Lupercalia.
One Valentine was a priest who was stoned and beheaded in AD 270 because he disobeyed Emperor Claudius’ order not to perform weddings for young people. Claudius believed that if young men were married they would be unwilling to leave their wives to go to war.
As the legend has it, Valentine was imprisoned. But while waiting for his execution he fell in love with the jailer’s blind daughter. Before he was led to his execution, he left her a final testimony of his love for her and signed it “Your Valentine”, which has become synonymous with the day ever since. The legend goes onto say that Valentine died on Feb. 14th.
It’s another example of the church and its message being hijacked and distorted by a society separated from God. What do we do about it? Stop buying chocolates, flowers and cards, and risk the stony silence of the ones we love?
St Valentine has been dropped from the church’s calendar because of his doubtful historicity. On February 14th we’re supposed to be remembering Saints Cyril and Methodius who were 2 Greek monks who went as missionaries to central Europe in 800 and something. At that time Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia didn’t have a written language. So Cyril and Methodius had to invent a new alphabet to represent the spoken language so that they could translate the Bible and Liturgy for the people. The alphabet they invented is called after St Cyril, the Cyrillic Script, which is still used in Russia today.
More important than St Valentine, but ……..
In early days, Romans called one of their gods Lupercus and asked him to protect them from the wolves which roamed the forests. His festival was February 15th when the custom was for the young girls’ names to be written on slips of paper and put in a jar. Each young man drew a slip. The girl whose name was chosen was to be his sweetheart for the year.
After Rome converted to Christianity, the church tried to incorporate this festival into Christianity. The old festival was abolished and replaced with St Valentine’s Day, celebrated the day before the banned Lupercalia.
One Valentine was a priest who was stoned and beheaded in AD 270 because he disobeyed Emperor Claudius’ order not to perform weddings for young people. Claudius believed that if young men were married they would be unwilling to leave their wives to go to war.
As the legend has it, Valentine was imprisoned. But while waiting for his execution he fell in love with the jailer’s blind daughter. Before he was led to his execution, he left her a final testimony of his love for her and signed it “Your Valentine”, which has become synonymous with the day ever since. The legend goes onto say that Valentine died on Feb. 14th.
It’s another example of the church and its message being hijacked and distorted by a society separated from God. What do we do about it? Stop buying chocolates, flowers and cards, and risk the stony silence of the ones we love?
St Valentine has been dropped from the church’s calendar because of his doubtful historicity. On February 14th we’re supposed to be remembering Saints Cyril and Methodius who were 2 Greek monks who went as missionaries to central Europe in 800 and something. At that time Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia didn’t have a written language. So Cyril and Methodius had to invent a new alphabet to represent the spoken language so that they could translate the Bible and Liturgy for the people. The alphabet they invented is called after St Cyril, the Cyrillic Script, which is still used in Russia today.
More important than St Valentine, but ……..
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