Article

Creed

Romance

Wildness

13 February 2025

4 min read

St Valentine and the great mystery of romance

Saints were martyrs for more than love.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

Volodymyr Tokar on Unsplash.

Valentine’s Day is the great Western celebration of ‘romance’. On the day restaurants are filled with couples – new and nervously trying to be constantly adoring in their gaze, or longstanding, staring out of the window, comfortable in the silence which can only truly be inhabited by those who really know each other. On this day garage flowers become a precious commodity. It is undoubtedly kitsch and forced and performative…but most great and important festivals are.

But who’s day is this?

Valentine, or Valentinus, was a third century martyr. Some legends claim that his faith was put to the test by a local judge, who brought his blind daughter before Valentine, and demanded he heal her. He did. The judge and his entire household renounced pagan idols and were baptised. This scandalous incident, and further bothersome evangelism, led to the Emperor Claudius commanding that Valentine be executed. Another legend claims him as a Roman priest who defied imperial orders and secretly married Roman soldiers in the Christian rite, allowing the soldiers to escape further conscription. I assume it is this latter legend which led to Valentine being adopted as the patron saint of heart-shaped chocolates – that and the mediaeval folklore that the birds would couple in mid-February. Whatever the case, I’m not interested in the legends of Valentine, entertaining as they are. It doesn’t matter to me if he married couples in secret, or healed the blind, or was an early avian dating app. He is a martyr.

Martyrdom is not a concept we are much familiar with in this country anymore. Yes, it is still a word in common parlance. We call people a ‘real martyr’ when they punish themselves doing work no is expecting or wanting them to do. We call someone a ‘martyr for the cause’ when they glue themselves to a set of railings, or get arrested vandalising a painting with soup. This isn’t martyrdom. True martyrdom is an act of romantic desire. True martyrdom is an act of love!

One of the earliest accounts of Christian martyrdom come from St Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch. At some point in the middle of the second century he was condemned to death and was transported to Rome under guard. As he travelled, he wrote letters to different Christian communities, including one to the Church in Rome. The account of martyrdom in this letter is both astoundingly beautiful, and the key to understanding martyrdom. He is writing, in part, to beg the Christians of Rome not to try and save him from his fate, either by violence of bribery.

He wishes his martyrdom and explains why. He writes that in this suffering he is “…beginning to be a disciple.” He compares his unfortunate situation to ‘birth pains’ now coming upon him and then makes a remarkable claim: he is not about to die, but is about to truly live!

“Grant this to me brothers: do not keep me from living; do not wish me to die…Allow me to receive the pure light; when I have arrived there, I will be a human.”

It has been suggested by some who can only see the dreadful, painful, grabby nature of martyrdom – and it is a blessing we live in an age and a land where we do not kill each other on account of our faith – that Ignatius was either a showman or a madman. I disagree. Ignatius does not want to be martyred because he wants to make a name for himself, but because he understands that in martyrdom he is becoming a type of the one true martyr: Jesus Christ. Perhaps he was mad…madly in love with Christ! He desired to be united with Christ, he desired to be as close to Jesus Christ as possible: “I desire the bread of God, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ…and for drink I desire his blood, which is imperishable love.” He desired Jesus above all other goods, even his own life.

In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love.

Martyrdom, seen in this manner, is a truly ‘romantic’ act – an act of the one who is so desirous of, so truly, madly, deeply in love with Jesus, that they will give everything for Jesus’ sake. Martyrs show us the real pattern of love: the sacrifice, of ourselves for the sake of another. This is the lesson Jesus taught his disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” In the life and death of the martyr we see this real love made manifest, and it is not unrequited but is entirely reciprocated. Jesus desires us and dies for us, and the martyr desires Jesus and dies for him. As Ignatius writes to the Romans: “Desire it, that you may also be desired.”

This is the lesson that every couple, as they grow in their life and their love together, slowly learn. If we seek romance and love, we seek not to change, or control, or extract pleasure from the other person as an object; we seek to give ourselves to them freely and completely, in the joy of service and sacrifice. In our little way, when we embark upon the great mystery of ‘romance’ we are seeking to be martyrs ourselves – martyrs for the one we love.

St Valentine was a man of genuine love, for he was a martyr. There is no greater reason to be a patron of passion, of matters of the heart, of romantic love.

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Easter tells us that we are missed

Our best relationships hint at what we are really missing.

Nathan Betts

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

A persons stands, holding a net curtain aside to gaze out.

Max Harlynking on Unsplash.

I never thought that God could miss me, but recently I’ve begun to wonder if he does.

Is there a person in your life that you just love spending time with? Maybe this person is a family member, a friend, colleague, neighbor, or maybe your spouse. As time has gone on in your life you now realize how special that person is to you. You think of the ease, the peace, the low heartbeat, lightheartedness, and depth of feeling that you’ve experienced all in simply being with that person and spending time with them.

As you think of that person, can you remember a time when there was a longer-than-usual gap between your visits? Maybe weeks, months, years. What was it like when you met up or talked to this special friend of yours after the hiatus? What did it feel like?

I have someone like this. His name is Andrew. He is my cousin, but I’ve generally thought of him as the brother I never had. We grew up together separated by only one year in age. My childhood is filled with memories of playing with him in different sports, games, wrestling, arguing, disagreeing, pranking each other, late-night fast-food runs, (which I no longer recommend), and eventually working long shifts on low sleep together. We were in each other’s wedding parties. We have experienced a lot of life together.

As time has gone on, and I now live on the other side of the continent, we have not been able to see each other as often as we would like.

But recently, he had a special work trip close to the Pacific Northwest, so he made time for a short stay with us near Seattle. On one day, I took him out for street tacos near the ocean and we were able to get some unhurried time to catch up. Throughout his visit I just kept thinking how much I had missed spending time with Andrew. He and I both expressed as much.

If you have just one of those friendships in life, you have hit the ball out of the park. And if you have two or three of those friendships, you’ve hit a grand slam. These friendships are unique.

For me, one of the most striking and poignant questions throughout the Bible is when God asks Adam “Where are you?”

As a theologian by education, I often think of these relational traits when it comes to God. Fundamental to Christian belief is that we can, despite how infinitely different he is to us, relate to God. There is a great deal of mystery to this idea, to be sure, but I’ve wondered long and hard what this looks like. In the long history of Christian thought, scholars, pastors, and theologians have pointed to Jesus Christ to help make sense of this massive, otherworldly concept.

The Hebrew Scriptures reveal what God is like in creation, miracles, acts of grace, displays of power and many other aspects. But when we are searching to understand how God relates to us as human beings, it is Jesus Christ who gives us the primary lens through which we can understand that quality of relationship. The interactions he has with his friends, leaders, children, and teachers are especially revealing. The way he heals people, enjoys meals with others, gives time to the outsiders, and speaks to the uptight religious types is all very instructive in how God relates to us as human beings.

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly interested in the questions that Jesus asks people. Jesus’s questions reveal to us what he is like.

“Why do you call me good?”

“Who do you say that I am?”

“Whose image is on this coin?”

“Will you also leave me?”

“What do you want me to do for you?”

These and many more have caused me to explore further the questions that God asks people because maybe his questions, sometimes more than his statements, reveal what makes him different.

For me, one of the most striking and poignant questions throughout the Bible is when God asks Adam “Where are you?” Since childhood I’ve wondered what God was doing in asking that question. God was not asking a geographical question; it’s not as though his internal GPS was confused in the garden of Eden. But if not a geography question, was God then playing an intellectual game with Adam and Eve? Perhaps, but that is increasingly doubtful, given the enormous stakes in that narrative (brokenness had just entered the world) as well as the message we read throughout the rest of the Bible: God takes people seriously.

Recently I wrote to my friend and leading Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke to see what he thought about God’s question to Adam. Perhaps you’ll find an excerpt of his answer as enlightening as I have:

The omniscient God is not asking because he does not know. He is asking a real question -- this is not a charade -- to show his involvement with Adam--both an historical and archetype of humanity -- to provoke him to engage with him in dialogue. In short, God misses his fellowship.

God is asking Adam where he is because he misses him.

Waltke’s answer to my question makes God’s question to Adam into a sign of his love for Adam, and he goes further to explain that this dialogue is “an historical and archetype of humanity”. If nothing else, it means that this is the way in which God views his relationship with us. God enjoys being with us and interacting with us. And when the relationship grows cold, he misses us.

Could it be possible that when we move away from God, he notices? He misses us?

The British writer Julian Barnes begins his poignant memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of with the words, “I do not believe in God, but I miss him.” Those words set the tone for a book in which Barnes writes about his complicated and fraught relationship with the transcendent. In his book, Barnes expresses his curiosity about what God is like. And amidst the deep and rich thoughts woven throughout the book, the reader never encounters the idea that while Barnes misses God, it might also be true that the God on the other side of the equation misses him.

To be honest, in all my thinking about God, it is just now that I am beginning to ponder the thought that when I move away from God on some level, he misses me. Could it really be possible that the God of creation misses me?

Could it be possible that when we move away from God, he notices? He misses us? God’s question to Adam, punctuated by Christ the Lord restoring the severed relationship through his death on the cross and resurrection, demonstrates God’s great capacity to love us.

As we approach Easter, wherever we might find ourselves on the spectrum of belief: whether we attend church, synagogue, temple, mosque or none; whether we have faith -- a little faith, beleaguered faith, or no faith -- the story of God asking that penetrating question to Adam and ultimately coming to us in Christ is the supreme portrait of what God is like. Easter reminds us that the nature of God’s love is such that when we walk away, God feels that loss, he misses us, and he comes looking for us.