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I wrongly have been saying that Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s day had not fallen on the same day in a long time. When I looked it up, I realized that it happened just back in 2018. Interestingly, 2018 was my first Ash Wednesday at Grace. It also was just under a month after the birth of Beckett, so I know I was there, but I honestly cannot remember it.
I decided to look into St. Valentine, something I can’t remember having done before. St. Valentine was a third Century priest or bishop from Terni, Italy. In the Catholic tradition, he is the patron saint of epilepsy and beekeepers. But for most, we associate St. Valentine with love.
How did this come to be? The story goes that Emperor Claudius II ordered that young men not be married before they completed a mandatory term of military service. St. Valentine, directly defying this order, secretly performed Christian marriages for couples so that, in part, the men did not have to serve in the pagan army. Because of this and his persistence, subversive proclamation of the gospel, Valentine was martyred around the year 269. He was approximately 42-43 years old.
So in that sense, Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine’s Day actually do fit pretty well together.
In Grace,
Pastor Steve
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