Who was St Valentine?
Saint Valentine was a Catholic priest who had also worked as a doctor. He lived in Italy during the third century AD and served as a priest in Rome.
In about the 3rd century at the time of Emperor Claudius, Saint Valentine started performing weddings when the Emperor forbade to marry. Claudius wanted to recruit lots of men to be soldiers in his army and thought that marriage would be an obstacle to recruiting new soldiers. Because he married those who were in love, he was put in jail and later killed by the Emperor.
Before he was killed, Valentine wrote a last note to encourage Julia (a daughter of a jailer) to stay close to Jesus and to thank her for being his friend. He signed the note: “From your Valentine.” That note inspired people to begin writing their own loving messages to people on Valentine’s Feast Day, February 14th, which is celebrated on the same day on which Valentine was killed.
It is not a story of a romantic love letter from a boyfriend to a girlfriend. What Saint Valentine did was probably heroic, he gave his life for the sake of true love.
But today, people hardly know this fact about Saint Valentine. People send messages to their lovers; Facebook is filled with words containing love and all kinds of gift giving and receiving are practiced for love’s sake.
Superficiality of love
I am a little suspicious about the way people celebrate Valentine day in this culture. We (Nepali) are the kind of people who would like to imitate others whether that be Valentine, Christmas day or Dashain without having a real understanding of it. I lived in Australia and Singapore for many years and I did not experience Valentine day in those countries as much as I have experienced in Nepal. In Nepal, people speak about and practice it. However, I have a doubt how many people genuinely care for the other whether that’s in marriage, family or society. I feel that most people, the way they express their words of love, is superficial. If I ask young people, ‘what love is?’ They would say something like: love you forever; happy Valentine’s day darling, happy Valentine day to all my FB friends; love you so much, happy Valentine; some people write a poem and much more. These expressions are taken from Facebook.
People who say or write things on Facebook, it’s their first thoughts that come out. It is most of the time not from their heart. As you think deeper, you realize that what you said is not what you should have said. I have also written on FB a number of times and have regrated on what I have said on Facebook – in most cases the expression and words are superficial. Thus, the love people express through Facebook can be superficial.
What love really is?
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters (1 John 3:16).
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins (1 John 4:10).
I’d like, especially to take us back to these two verses to understand what love really is. We define love in our own terms, which have flaws. But the Bible has something to teach us about love which is so rich that blows our mind when we understand it.
Love is commitment
Love is commitment
Firstly, love is a commitment to love others in a way God demonstrated. When we say, ‘I love you’, we are saying, ‘I have committed to love you no matter what’. It is easy to love when things are going well. But when the people we love suffer through cancer or some kinds of horrible disease, are we ready to sacrifice our life in the care of him/her for the rest of our life?
Love demands our commitment to others as God is committed to love us by laying down his life for us.
Love is sacrifice
Secondly, love is a sacrifice. Giving our time, resources and energy and even our life in the service of others is a sacrifice. All of us want others to do something for us. Most of the time, we love for selfish reasons. But real love comes with sacrifice. God loved us not because we were loving but because ‘God is Love’. God dying for us is the biggest sacrifice we can ever know and experience. And we must sacrifice our lives for the sake of others.
Love is action
Love is not just a feeling. We might feel something at someone and say some words that convey words of love. Not that words are unimportant, it is not enough to utter words if that is not accompanied by our action. Jesus could have said, ‘I love you so much guys’ and did nothing more than that. Would we believe in him? Probably not. Because Jesus went to the cross and died to show what ‘love’ is, we believe God loves us. God’s love required an act of dying on the cross. I don’t believe in someone who says, ‘I love you’ but does nothing to prove that he/she truly loves.
Therefore, we need to go back to what Saint Valentine believed and died for: he died for love’s sake. He knew how much God loved him and died for the sake of love even when the Emperor tried to suppress the love of God. Valentine day is not just about giving flowers but it’s more than that: our commitment and sacrifice to love the other person with our action.
What can you do to make the person feel loved today?
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By
Samuel Budhathoki
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