Today is Valentine’s day, but the three martyrs whom this day was named after are long missing from the current legends. The day is no longer in the Church calendar. Wikipedia notes.

In the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints, the feast day of Saint Valentine on February 14 was removed from the General Roman Calendar and relegated to particular (local or even national) calendars for the following reason: “Though the memorial of Saint Valentine is ancient, it is left to particular calendars, since, apart from his name, nothing is known of Saint Valentine except that he was buried on the Via Flaminia on February 14.”^[14] The feast day is still celebrated in Balzan (Malta) where relics of the saint are claimed to be found, and also throughout the world by Traditionalist Catholics who follow the older, pre-Second Vatican Council calendar. February 14 is also celebrated as St Valentine’s Day in other Christian denominations; it has, for example, the rank of ‘commemoration’ in the calendar of the Church of England and other parts of the Anglican Communion

The Reformed calendar is stripped more bare than the Anglicans, who celebrate, for instance the death of Charles I. But the reformed noted that this date was conflated with the troubadour ideas of courtly love and smacked of not only Papism but paganism. So it disappeared from the calendar,

Anyway, today is a day where you are supposed to declare your secret love. Where girls cry because they got no cards, and boys are sad because their gifts are rejected.  I do not see much fun in this day, instead I see pain, hurt, and commercial exploitation. And today I am thankful the boys go to a single sex school. There will be no hearts given out there today.

Today I am thinking more of the grandaughter, in Canada, where this meme is rampant, and where the making of these things is seen as a nice craft activity. I pray that she will not be harmed, for there is enough pain in that family at present. It is a horrible day for my daughter, for her husband is very unwell. For them, Valentines Day, this year, has barbs.

But  God is more merciful than this.

Psalm 103:6-14

The LORD works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed.
⁷   He made known his ways to Moses,  his acts to the people of Israel.
⁸   The LORD is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
⁹   He will not always accuse,   nor will he keep his anger for ever.
¹⁰  He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
¹¹  For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
¹²  as far as the east is from the west,   so far he removes our transgressions from us.
¹³  As a father has compassion for his children,  so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.
¹⁴  For he knows how we were made;  he remembers that we are dust.

For none of us are adequate. None of us are perfect. Courtly love is a convenient lie: it makes our lust into an idol as we define that woman as perfect because we see her as beautiful. There is a person is a person under that skin, who wants to be accepted, as Christ accepted us, flaws and all — and then be allowed and ecnouraged to grind the flaws away. The reason marriage is a holy estate is that it forces us to change, to think of our spouse, and moderate our quirks, faults and irritability for the sake of their feelings and our children.

There is not much romance in that hard work. But there is something deeper — and if it gets destroyed, as our no fault divorce does time and time again, something breaks.  This society is damaging women and men. The fun is gone. We are left with broken, suspicious, and isolated.

Let the romantics grieve. Their time is past. Today is Feb. 14. Let the commercial world do otherwise. We can enjoy this as an ordinary day, or turn it into a time of hurt.