Valentine’s Day — 14 February.
There are several St.Valentines, but earlier than any of them is an Early Church priest, introduced to us with the following text by Andrew Rockell
Valentinus — a 2nd Century ‘alternative worship/alt.church’ leader. An early church ‘Citysider’. Disciple of Theudas, who was a disciple of St.Paul.
Valentinians: followers of Valentinus.
Their practice included:
- decentralisation of leadership
- involvement in creativity and the arts
- interior work (do-it-yourself psychology)
- contemplation
- energetic theologies
- full participation of women in the life of the church
- an understanding of God as both ‘Father’ and ‘Mother’
- interest in story, symbol and metaphor rather than literalism or proposition
- sacramental thinking and approach to life
- a recognition that the negatives of life are to be embraced for what they can tell us rather than simply
rejected, suppressed or ‘renounced’
- a strong sense of following Jesus as exploration and adventure rather than a process of self-restriction.
And Valentinus himself attempted to psychoanalyse God.
The early church moved against the Valentinians to the Valentinians’ bafflement, and excluded them.
Yet, in the 20th Century, many of Valentinus’ ideas have become more mainstream, thanks in part to the
work of Paul Tillich, C.G. Jung, Elaine Pagels, Bishop Spong and Walter Wink.
“So,
they did not know God,
since it was he whom they did not see.
Insofar as he was the object of fear and
disturbance and instability and indecisiveness and
division there was much futility at work among them on
his account, and much empty ignorance.
As when you fall sound asleep and find yourself in
the midst of nightmares:
- running toward some place,
powerless to get away while being pursued
- in hand-to-hand combat
- being beaten
- falling from a height
- being blown upward by the air, but without any
wings
Sometimes, too, it seems like you’re being murdered,
although no one is chasing you,
or killing your neighbours, with whose blood you are
smeared,
until,
having gone through these dreams,
you wake up.”
- The Gospel of Truth, Valentinus
(modified by Andrew Rockell)
“What makes us free is the recognition:
of who we were
of what we have become
of where we were
of wherein we have been thrown
of whereto we are hastening
of what we are being freed
of what birth really is
of what rebirth really is”
- Valentinian ‘Credo’, liturgy, Theodotus (2nd Century)
(modified by Andrew Rockell)
Another version of who St Valentine ‘really’ was:
A Scottish doctor-priest, Valentinus ignored a Roman decree of about AD270 forbidding Christian marriages and was sentenced to death for conducting them. The saint-to-be cured his jailer’s daughter of blindness and she fell in love with him, but couldn’t save him. Before his execution, Valentinus managed to slip a final note to the girl signed, of course, ‘From your Valentine.’
(From Peter Sinclair’s column in the New Zealand Herald)