Did you know that Saint Valentine’s Day was named for Bishop Valentine who was martyred in February 270 AD for not renouncing his faith, and for continuing to perform marriages in spite of the Roman emperor’s edict forbidding marriage?
And did you know that the church in Rome established Saint Valentine’s Day on February 14, 496 to compete with the February 15 Lupercalia fertility festival which promoted illicit sexual activity? The Christian holiday, named after Valentine because of his devotion to marriage, encouraged men to give written messages of intent to women they sought to marry.
The tradition of sending cards began with these early messages. From the beginning, the heart was the central symbol in the handmade cards of Christians, no doubt because the Bible presents the heart as the seat of emotions and affections. But as the holiday grew in popularity, the Roman god Cupid, piercing the heart with his arrow, began to appear on the cards - a fitting symbol of how Satan works to corrupt even man’s best intentions.
If the heart is the central symbol of this February holiday, then its corruption or disease should not surprise those who read the Bible, because it says that “the hearts of men are full of evil and there is madness in their hearts” (Eccl. 9:3). What began over 1500 years ago as an effort to combat sexual immorality once again took on immoral overtones.
Can man’s heart ever be made healthy? Only if we learn how to combat the heart’s worst disease. Only if we allow the Great Physician to perform His surgery. Only if we learn how to take care of the heart.
To find out more about heart disease and how to cure it, read on, as this month’s features are all about man’s heart.
By Larry Ondrejack
Grace & Truth Magazine February 2000
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