OPINION (AN COLÚN): The link between Valentine's Day and one of life's great gifts

VALENTINE'S DAY is a charming festival which brings out the best in a lot of us. Its roots date back to the Middle Ages when the notion of courtly love was fashionable among the courtier class (which included nobles, knights and people of wealth). In courtly love the man pursuing the woman did not view the woman in purely sexual terms, but also perceived in her something of the soul, something of the beings who inhabit the next world, who inhabit Heaven. One of the benefits of belief systems such as courtly love is they can be a valuable corrective to an overly materialistic attitude to relations between the sexes.
English society in the 1700s further developed the festival when they made the day an occasion for gifting flowers and cards to the objects of their affections.
It is uncertain who St Valentine was, and it's possible he was one of three people, or a subsequent amalgamation of all three. As with many saints much of his story is obviously untrue and is the stuff of legend. It's very possible he had nothing to do with romantic love; that romantic love was added on to his story by subsequent generations (such as the story that he signed a letter to a woman “from your Valentine”). Another of the legends states that Valentine performed Christian weddings which were forbidden by the Roman Emperor. One of the three Valentines, Saint Valentine of Rome, was martyred on February 14 in AD 269. In AD 496 Pope Gelasius initiated a feast day in remembrance of this martyr.
What is certain is there were very brave clergymen who ministered to persecuted Christians during the Roman Empire and for these acts they, the clergymen, were executed.
The Carmelite Church in Whitefriar Street, Dublin contains some of the relics of Saint Valentine, which were donated by Pope Gregory XVI in the 19th Century. Some Christians make a pilgrimage to the Carmelite Church on February 14 to be in the presence of the relics. They also pray, during their visit, that they will find true love. The church houses a book which contains the pilgrims' prayer requests for love.
Nowadays, Valentine's Day operates on a couple of levels, namely the expression of sexual desire and the expression of a deep, lasting affection; the former can be weighed down with unpleasant baggage and often gets a bad rap; the latter is frequently not even mentioned, or is met with an attitude of indifference or scorn. I read somewhere that sex should be thought of as a gift, that its pleasures are a consolation during our human journey, a journey which is beset by a lot of misery and suffering. Sex shouldn't be thought of as a burden or a vice but as a gift. There is nothing inherently wrong with sex. It is a thing of beauty.
It's also a pathway to one of life's greatest gifts, if not the greatest, namely a lasting and deep affection between a couple which lasts for a long time, sometimes a whole lifetime. This affection is sometimes known as true love. There are many couples in their 80s and 90s who remain bound by this force after decades together. True love is a jewel beyond price. It shines out in a world which is often savage, cruel, cynical and crushed by the visionless space that is money, commerce, materialism. True love is not fleeting or shallow. In its embrace a couple have mutual respect for one another, they support one another and they understand one another. Plato beautifully summed up this feeling when he said, “Love is born into every human being; it calls back the halves of our original nature together; it tries to make one out of two and heal the wound of human nature....Every heart sings a song incomplete until another heart whispers back.” George Eliot summed it up excellently when she wrote, “What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined to strengthen each other and to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.” Aristotle - “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” Kahlil Gibran - “When you love you should not say, 'God is in my heart,' but rather, 'I am in the heart of God'.”