On not being embarrassed on Valentine's Day

While the details of who St Valentine was are contested, one thing is agreed upon: he was martyred and buried on February 14 at the Roman cemetery on the Via Flaminia, the ancient road from Rome to Rimini - Daily Telegraph, 14th February 2019.

To celebrate this 14 February, here's everything you need to know about the history of Valentine's Day and how it came to be. While there are various Christian saints by the name of Valentine, the most famous is probably Saint Valentine of Rome - Daily Mirror, 14th February 2019.

Little else is known about his life although he is thought to have defied the Emperor Claudius by performing Christian weddings, perhaps even handing out parchment hearts as a reminder of the love of God or delivering letters between jailed lovers in secret - Independent, 14th February 2019.

Spouses and sweethearts will have exchanged 'Happy Valentine's Day' greetings and presents, cards will have been sent, roses given.

Yes, it is St Valentine's Day. 

But not in contemporary Anglican liturgical calendars. 

St Cyril and St Methodius are commemorated on this day in, for example, the CofE's Common Worship and Canada's Book of Alternative Services. This follows the example of the Roman Church since thepost-Vatican II revision of its liturgical calendar.

Why would the Church exclude an ancient Christian martyr, with a venerable history of being recognised as such, from its calendar of commemorations when this particular commemoration has a deep cultural resonance? The significance of the question only increases when we consider why the Church should do so when Valentine has a particular association with an experience common to most people - romantic love. 

Here Valentine does have importance, refuting misconceptions about the Church and romantic love.  Such misconceptions were on display today in the Independent story quoted above.  According to the Independent:

[Valentine] has come to be considered the patron saint of love and lovers, a slightly contradictory notion for a faith at other times placing an emphasis on self-denial.

Of course, removing Valentine from the liturgical calendar only reinforces such notions that the Church is embarrassed by and ill-at-ease with the experience of romantic love.  It also ignores the fact that Valentine's Day emerged within Christendom, rooted in both a Christian vision and in the Church's blessing of romantic love.  

Mindful of misconceptions of the Church's understanding of romantic love, and recalling how Valentine's day is deeply rooted in Christian culture, there are good reasons for the Church to mark this cultural commemoration and actively encourage understanding of its Christian roots.  To use words of the Bishop of Burnley, Philip North, regarding the CofE's unwillingness to address marriage and the family, by turning away from Valentine's Day and its celebration of romantic love, "the danger is that the Church is failing to address or uphold an area of life that is a core preoccupation for the majority of people".

The irony is, of course, that turning away from Valentine's Day, and taking a perverse pride in showing up the plebs by announcing that it is actually the feast of St Cyril and St Methodius, runs counter to the Church's daily experience - in the romantic love that is blessed in the solemnization of Matrimony, the romantic love that is the foundation of family life. 

Contrast the poe-faced response of the Church to the cultural commemoration of St Valentine with the festivity and joy the Church encourages (or should encourage) at the Solemnization of Matrimony.  In Keble's words on Matrimony, "There is an awe in mortals' joy".  This joy should also find expression in Valentine's Day, as the Church rejoices in romantic love being oriented towards and finding its fulfilment in marriage.

Concerns about the commercialisation of Valentine's Day are no more an obstacle to the commemoration than is the commercialisation of Christmas an obstacle to the Church's celebration of the Nativity.  What is more, festivity should quite naturally include food, flowers, and presents.  As Hooker notes, festivity includes "our comfort and delight expressed by a charitable largeness of somewhat more than common bounty" (LEP V.71.x).

With the greatest respect to Cyril and Methodius, it is a nonsense for the Church to commemorate them in place of Valentine on 14th February.   To create further distance between perceptions of the Church's life and the experience of romantic love does nothing to aid the Church's mission. To hand over Valentine to secular culture, to renounce the explicitly Christian roots of the day, is itself an act of secularization.  Indeed, it can be seen as a secularization of romantic love, of a defining experience in most lives. 

There is a wisdom in the 1662 Calendar's commemoration of Valentine, bishop and martyr.  Being a Black Letter Day, the absence of liturgical provision is actually a strength: it respects the obscurity surrounding the martyr, while also allowing the Church's calendar to embrace the cultural commemoration and celebration. This cultural celebration emerged from the Church's life and witness, and rejoices in an experience which the Church joyfully blesses. The Church should thus be reclaiming the festivities of this day (and see Malcolm Guite's sonnet for the day as an example of this), celebrating romantic love not as secular experience but - in the words of the 1662 rite for the Solemnization of Matrimony - as the gift of the "Giver of all spiritual grace".