Flowers, candy, red hearts, and sappy “rom-coms” are what we usually associate with the highly commercialized Valentine’s Day. But students at LCCS are taught to celebrate the true meaning of St. Valentine’s Day, which has little to do with sentimental romance and everything to do with sacrificial love, the sacredness of Christian marriage, and even martyrdom--topics of importance in our own day and age.

Valentine’s Day, in fact, originated as a liturgical feast day of the classical and Medieval Christian church commemorating the heroic yet gruesome martyrdom of Saint Valentine, an outspoken 3rd-century priest who celebrated and defended the sanctity of Christian marriage in a day when polygamy and licentiousness were the norms.

Despite the distance in time, things are not much different in our own day as we are witnessing the rapid, post sexual revolution disintegration of the family, a pervasive “anything goes” sexual permissiveness, and a full scale assault on the ideals of Christian marriage and the nuclear family. While Christians aren’t necessarily being martyred in the streets for their biblical views on marriage, they are routinely “crucified” in popular media, politics, and the court of public opinion.

While there isn’t anything inherently wrong with exchanging valentines and passing out Hershey Kisses (yes, our student do engage in these fun activities), it is important as a Christian educational community living in a post-modern, neo-pagan culture, that we don’t lose sight of the true meaning of Valentine’s Day.