Saturday, February 14, 2009

A Reflection on Valentine's Day

Happy St. Valentine's Day. It's an interesting one this year, because of course yesterday was Friday the 13th. Unusual combination. I hope that you're doing well and, if you have not yet been blessed with a significant other, are not celebrating "Single Awareness Day" but rather a celebration of friendship such as my friends and I did last night. (Complete with awesomeness of Mafia, Swing dancing, Irish Dancing, and Psychiatrist.)

But I woke up today wondering if we really have the day all wrong. Instead of celebrating romantic love, should we not really be celebrating the institution of marriage?

For those of you who are unaware of the story, St. Valentine was a monk who performed marriages at a time when Roman soldiers were forbidden to marry. (It was supposed to make them better soldiers or something if they didn't have to worry about wives and children back home). Anyhow, when his disobediance was discovered, he was dragged out into the arena and martyered.

(My apologies to the History Buffs if I have any of my facts muddled, I'm going off of memory here.)

So my thought is this. If St. Valentine was martyred for advocating marriage, should not the day revolve around a celebration of this God-Given institution? As it is, it seems rather an encouragement to the teenage dating system than otherwise.

4 comments:

Delaney said...

Hear hear! :D

Your new background is lovely. :)

Andy Hauge said...

You know something funny? This Valentine's Day, the Catholic Church said exactly that. First of all, that St. Valentine may or may not have existed as we know him (we have at least three different St. Valentines), and that it's St. Raphael (from the story of Tobit) who's more responsible for finding people their other halves. (St. Raphael guided Tobit, and ended up pairing him with his spouse...also at the same time taking out the demon who'd been knocking off her previous husbands)

Elenatintil said...

Delaney- Thank you!

Carpe- really? Wow, that is funny! Hmmm, more evidence that my mind is becoming Catholic?

Josh said...

Brilliant comment Elena! I absolutely agree. Today in English class we discussed that their is still pressure to get married, but I think many in my class don't think that it is morally wrong to live with someone rather than marry him/her. It is a terrible thing that our holidays have gone from meaningful to frivilous and damaging.