Saint Valentine

The Weekly Wrap: February 9-15

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Remembering a Martyred Saint

I write this on the evening of St. Valentines Day. While we celebrate it as the holiday of romantic love, the day actually marks the martyrdom of the original Saint Valentine in 269 AD. Valentine was kind and he was courageous in testifying to his faith, even in the face of a death sentence. We know little more than that about him.

While imprisoned awaiting death, Valentine wrote notes to encourage his friends, tying them with twine, signing them “from your valentine.” So that’s where the practice of all those “valentines” I had to take and exchange each year at school came from! Seriously, it is an amazing act of selfless kindness for one about to die.

As the story goes, the “valentine” he sent on the day of his death went to a formerly blind girl. A judge in one of his cases gave him a challenge. If his God was so powerful, then ask that God to heal the judge’s blind daughter. Valentine prayed and God healed the girl through him. She lived to see while he died.

Reading fiction is supposed to develop empathy. But empathy is only a feeling if it is not converted to acts of kindness. Of late, our cultural life consists more in threats and harsh words than in kindness. Perhaps it is up to us readers to be the modern Valentines, speaking and acting with kindness in an increasingly coarse world. We may never know those we heal by our kindness. And it could cost us dearly. But if that’s the cost to be kind in a cruel world, I’d choose that in a heartbeat over cold cruelty.

Five Articles Worth Reading

Many of us thought Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead one of the best novels we read, chronicling the deadly opioid epidemic in Appalachia. Kingsolver is an example of turning empathy into action. In “‘Demon Copperhead’ Explored Addiction. Its Profits Built a Recovery House,” we learn Kingsolver has used her royalties from the book to start a center for Appalachian women in recovery.

The empathy evoked from literature often comes from its exploration of suffering. In “Beyond the Cage and Fog,” Mary Grace Mangano explores the contrasting ways Gerard Manley Hopkins and Sylvia Plath addressed mental suffering.

Tove Jansson is best known for the Moomins cartoons. Lauren LeBlanc, in “The Outsider Who Captured American Loneliness” reviews a new book by Jansson, Sun City. The setting of the book is a senior community in St. Petersburg, Florida. It explores the loneliness of many who are elderly in America.

Then there is Ross Douthat. Often, the most interesting reads in The New York Times are the op-eds, and Douthat’s are among those. I appreciate his voice as a person of faith, Now, he has a new book out titled Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious. “Accidental Pilgrim” adapts content from the book to describe Douthat’s own faith journey.

Finally, it is National Library Lovers Month! Of course, isn’t that the case every month for booklovers. Sadly, not all share our library love. Katie McLain Horner offers practical tips for ways we can support our libraries in “How to Stand Up for Your Local Library by Getting Involved.”

Quote of the Week

I’m a fan of the mysteries of Georges Simenon. It just so happens he was born February 13, 1903. Consider this pithy observation, with which most of us will identify:

“I adore life but I don’t fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible.”

Miscellaneous Musings

I’ve learned of so many good books through other readers. There is one who not only introduced me to the writing of William Kent Krueger but also to a book I am reading right now. It is And There Was Light, an interesting title for a memoir by a blind French resistance hero, Jacques Lusseyrand.

A Cargo of Eagles is the last of the Albert Campion books by Margery Allingham. I just began it. Whereas I loved the Brother Cadfael series and was sad to come to the last of the books, I honestly feel more relieved to finish Allingham. Convoluted plots, lots of people to keep track of, and an enigmatic sleuth make her books a challenge. Of the Queens of Crime, I rank Sayers, Christie, and Marsh ahead of her, in that order.

I’ve long wanted to read through my grandmother’s Bible. She was a woman of faith who had a profound influence in my life for the few years I knew her. I now have outlived her but I’m curious what her Bible will tell me about her. It is an old Scofield study Bible in the King James Version with tissue thin pages. I began reading it this week.

Next Week’s Reviews

Monday: Jeremy Lundgren, The Pursuit of Safety

Tuesday: Phoebe Farag Mikhail, Hunger for Righteousness

Wednesday: Jill Lepore, The Story of America

Thursday: Archibald A. Alexander, The Log Coillege

Friday: Megan Henning, Nils Neumann, eds., Vivid Rhetoric and Visual Persuasion: Ekphrasis in Early Christian Literature

So, that’s The Weekly Wrap for February 9-15, 2025!

Find past editions of The Weekly Wrap under The Weekly Wrap heading on this page

Review: Saint Valentine the Kindhearted

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Saint Valentine the Kindhearted, Ned Bustard (text and illustrations). Downers Grove: IVP Kids, 2024.

Summary: A retelling in verse and woodcut illustrations of the story of Saint Valentine, centered on not only his kindheartedness, but that there is more to love than romance.

Roses are red, violets are blue,
sugar is sweet, and so are you.
This is the poem many share
to show how much they love and care.
Flowers and candy sent our way
ev'ry year on Valentine's Day.
But why the cards that say, "Be mine"?
That's all from dear Saint Valentine!

      --Ned Bustard

Ned Bustard opens this latest book in his series of children’s books with IVP Kids with this rhyme, familiar to all of us who went through Valentine’s Day card exchanges in primary grades and the giving of flowers and candy (and perhaps a romantic dinner!) with that special someone. With that day coming up in a couple weeks (also Ash Wednesday in 2024, an interesting juxtaposition!), this book for children and grownups explores the life of this saint. Bustard follows the format of the other two books in this series, Saint Nicholas, the Giftgiver and Saint Patrick, the Forgiver, alternating his hand-carved woodcuts on the lefthand page with verse on the righthand page.

Bustard reminds us in an afterword that relatively little is known of Saint Valentine apart from his ministry of preaching, healing, and caring for the poor when Christians resisted the pressure to worship the gods of the Roman empire. The story centers around one the legends about Valentine. Haled before a judge for marrying Roman soldiers, supposedly weakening their resolve to fight, he is challenged to show the judge that Christ is true by healing the judge’s blind daughter. Valentine prays for her and she is healed. In response, the judge destroys his household statues of his gods, and is baptized along with forty others of his household.

Image from publisher’s webpage for Saint Valentine the Kindhearted.

We also learn the story of “valentines.” Valentine was later summoned before the emperor where he boldly testified to Christ. Thrown into prison, he wrote short notes of encouragement and affection to all his friends, tying each with twine, signing them “from your Valentine.” Apparently one of these was written on the day of his martyrdom, February 14, to the girl whose sight he restored (his execution and martyrdom is only alluded to here as when “his time came to an end” with the girl receiving notes from him).

Each of the books focuses on one quality, in this case the kindheartedness of Valentine. The book also expands our notion of the love we celebrate beyond romantic love. Bustard depicts the natural love of family, parents for children, the love of friends, and pure, unconditional love. If you note closely on the cover and in the text, there are four different colors of hearts, representing these four loves.

There is so much within 32 pages, not only about kindness and love but the unflinching courage of this saint in testifying to the saving work of the risen Lord Jesus, refusing to bow the knee to the Roman gods, for which he died.

For those who regard Valentine’s Day as sappy or simply a celebration of romantic (and in our culture, highly sexualized) love, this story invites us to recapture the deeper story of the saint after whom it is named, the depth and breadth of love expressed in his story, and his courageous martyrdom, his death for the One he loved. In this year when February 14 is both Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, reading this book enriches and makes sense of how we can give ourselves in love while always being ready to die for what we love. Read and share this book with those you love!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Reviews of previous books in this series

Saint Nicholas the Giftgiver

Saint Patrick the Forgiver