The current “ordo,” the church’s official annual calendar of feasts, lists Feb. 14 as the feast of St. Cyril, monk, and St. Methodius, bishop. They were blood brothers in the ninth century who are known as the “Apostles to the Slavs.”
They began by preaching the Gospel in Moravia (in the eastern part of what is now the Czech Republic) and translated the liturgy into the Slavonic language. (Feb. 14 was the date of St. Cyril’s death.)
In the 1962 missal of Pope John XXIII, Feb. 14 was marked as the feast of St. Valentine. As closely as can be determined, Valentine was a priest of Rome who was martyred in the persecution under the Emperor Claudius, probably around the year 270.
Legend says that Claudius had issued a decree forbidding his military troops to marry and that Valentine defied this decree by urging young lovers to come to him for the sacrament of matrimony.
Further legend has it that during Valentine’s imprisonment, he befriended the blind daughter of his jailer, converted her and her father to Christianity, restored her sight and, the night before his execution, wrote her a farewell message signed, “From Your Valentine.”
In the 1969 reform of the liturgical calendar, the church reduced the number of feast days of saints for whom hard historical facts were scarce, including St. Valentine.
His popularity persists, however, along with age-old customs of cards and candy — and if you surveyed Catholics as to whose feast we celebrate Feb. 14, probably 99 percent would answer “St. Valentine’s.”
Reference:
By Father Kenneth Doyle
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