"Will you be mine?"

When I was a boy, I once asked a girl in my class to "be my valentine". She said, "no"; I was crushed. I had thought for sure that she liked me. At the time, all I knew about "St. Valentine" was that we celebrated his day by romantic type stuff. Sadly, we actually know very little about what he did in his life (as is the case with a number of early Saints). Yes, he did encourage couples to marry, but so little is known about this part of his life that it is best to be cautious in attributing things to him. We do know for certain that when told to abandon his faith, he refused and was martyred.

He is definitely a Saint, but the Church removed his celebration from the liturgical calendar because there is virtually no true devotion to him, and the "celebration" of his day today is completely misguided and has little to nothing to do with the Saint himself. My favorite "non-quote" from St. Valentine is: "Roses are red, violets are blue, I was beaten with clubs, beheaded, buried under the cover of darkness, disinterred by my followers, and you commemorate my martyrdom by sending each other chocolates."

What is on today's calendar though? It is the feast day of Cyril and Methodius (whose birth names were Constantine and Michael) who lived in the ninth century A.D.. They were brothers who were possibly two of the most influential Catholics in Europe and Asia in medieval times. They spread the gospel to vast numbers of pagans. Cyril invented the "cyrillic" alphabet (still used today in Russian and other slavic languages). Methodius trained numerous men for the priesthood who could take over his ministry when he passed.

After being criticized for translating the Bible and the Mass into the Old Slavic language, they went to Rome to convince Pope Adrian II of the need for their converts to have the Bible and the Mass in their native language. He thoroughly agreed with them and they were given permission to continue using these new translations and celebrate the Mass in a language other than Greek or Latin (which was the first time this happened in the Church--yes in the 800's, not the 1960's!). The interesting twist on all this, is that the "Old Slavic" into which they translated the Bible and the Mass, was not the vernacular! It was essentially an older more formal form of Slavic that everyone understood, but no one actually spoke (exactly like the Divine Worship Mass being in Old English; do not miss how important this is!). This is the same as the Greek translation of the Scriptures used by the early Church (the Septuagint); it was in an unspoken form of Greek instead of the vernacular!

Cyril and Methodius brought the gospel to those who had no idea what it was. They spoke to the people in their own language, and saw the goodness of having the liturgy in a language that was thoroughly reverent but that the people understood. They devoted themselves to bringing Christ to those in need and helping them to understand His truth. Their contribution to the Kingdom of God is far beyond what most people know about them. We need more Catholics like Cyril and Methodius in our day. So then, on this February 14th, instead of asking, "Will you be my Valentine?", I will ask: "Will you be my Cyril and Methodius?"