Intersections

  Happy February everyone! This month is special to me because I’m a big fan of Valentine’s Day. I know, it seems to be a holiday made up by the greeting card companies & chocolate makers to be advantageous to them and their profits. But no - there was a real Saint Valentine, much like Saint Nicholas and Saint Patrick. I understand that the United Methodist Church doesn’t subscribe to the idea of sainthood, but connecting to larger church history may be at very least interesting. The truth is, that historians aren’t sure if St. Valentine was one or more people? The legend goes, he was a real person, who was martyred in 270 A.D., and the story beyond that is inconsistent at best. One account says that St. Valentine was a priest who was beheaded by the Roman emperor Claudius II because he would help Christian couples wed during a time when it was outlawed. A different account says that he was a bishop, but with many of the same details. Regardless, it’s interesting that the t...