Welcome to Verity. I'm your host, Felicia Masonheimer, an author, speaker, and Bible teacher.

This podcast will help you embrace the history and depth of the Christian faith,

ask questions, seek answers, and devote yourself to becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ.

You don't have to settle for water down Christian teaching, and if you're ready to go deeper,

God is just as ready to take you there. This is Verity, where every woman is a theologian.

Happy Valentine's week, my friends. In this episode, we're celebrating Valentine's Day

with a little church history all about Saint Valentine, who he was, and maybe at the end,

a few ideas for celebrating Valentine's Day in a special way. So for this particular episode,

I want to go way back in time to the second and third centuries, actually right around

AD 240 to 270. Now, full confession, there are technically two or more valentines in church history.

It was a pretty common name. It's kind of like saying a guy was named, I don't know, Kevin,

today. There can be more than one Kevin. That's kind of what was happening back in the third

century with Valentine. And so Saint Valentine now is a celebrated church holiday, but over the

course of church history, he actually has had his particular celebration day removed because

the facts about his story can't be completely verified. But we do have a lot of legends about

who Valentine was, and they do give us a really cool context for celebration of this holiday.

So if you're someone who really hates Valentine's Day because it's commercialized,

I totally understand. Or if you're single and irritated because it's Valentine's Day and there

are just couples everywhere and it's obnoxious, totally understand. But maybe the context of

Valentine's Day will give you a new view. And we can think outside the box in terms of how to

love others on Valentine's Day. So the Cuban and Flowers element of Valentine's Day hasn't

been around as long as we may think. It didn't start in the first few centuries of the church,

...