St Valentine

TO ALL YOU LOVERS OUT THERE

HAPPY ST VALENTINE'S DAY

Thank you to Br Lawrence Lew OP for the photo and a little info on St Valentine.

Actually, in the Ordinary Form Calendar we are not celebrating St Valentine but Ss Cyril and Methodius. It struck me as a missed opportunity that the secular world is still celebrating the remnants of a culture that was once based on the Church and the Christian Faith but that because we have changed our ancient practice we no longer have that link with which to engage the world - in what could be a very positive way in regards to St Valentine.

Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi spoke of the need for more profound dialogue with non-believers in an interview last week with Vatican Radio (read it here). The Cardinal is speaking of quite elevated academic dialogue but it also has to be engaging in the real world of popular culture that the majority of men and women experience in our society. Many non-believers are celebrating St Valentine's day with a loved one - an ideal point from which to begin dialogue but one that we have lost because we don't actually keep that feast any more.

We tinker with our Tradition at our peril, as the Venerable Pope Pius XII, of happy memory, once wrote:

"I hear around me partisans of novelties who want to demolish the Holy Sanctuary, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject her adornments, and make her remorseful for her historical past. Well, my dear friend, I am convinced that the Church of Peter must affirm her past, or else she will dig her own tomb."

(Georges Roche & Philippe Saint Germain, Pie XII devant l'Histoire, Paris: Robert Lafont, 1972, p. 52-53).