BILLINGS — On this Valentine’s Day, many of us are thinking about dinner reservations or chocolates and flowers, but this isn’t just a Hallmark holiday. Valentine’s Day actually has religious roots, named after the martyr St. Valentine.
As a Catholic priest, Father Leo McDowell may have a different perspective than most of us when it comes to Valentine’s Day.
“Most of the people, they think of Valentine’s Day, okay, it’s a time for us to get flowers for our girlfriend,” said McDowell.
However, he does know more about the origins of Valentine’s Day than most.
St. Valentine’s Day, according to McDowell, is a Christian feast day honoring a man who died spreading love.
“St. Valentine was a priest who served in Rome during the time of a lot of the persecution of the church,” McDowell said.
He said that at the time, the Roman emperor considered marriage to be a distraction for his soldiers, so he forbade them from getting married. Valentine, though, was a bit of a rebel.
“And so oftentimes, Valentine would secretly do the weddings for these soldiers so that they could go ahead and live a sacrament life in the church,” said McDowell.
McDowell said that it was Valentine’s passion for what was right that allowed him to defy the emperor’s orders.
“St. Valentine felt marriage was important, and it was more about trying to help them continue to live that life as a married couple and bring families into existence,” McDowell said.
Those weddings eventually got him killed. The emperor executed St. Valentine, ordering him clubbed to death. But it wasn’t before he was reported to have performed a miracle.
According to the church, Valentine restored the sight of a blind girl, who was the daughter of his jailer, and then wrote her a letter known as the first valentine.
It’s a story that few know.
“We get all caught up with sometimes the commercialism of it and we start to miss, you know, the story behind the holiday,” said McDowell.
But it’s one that McDowell hopes will inspire.
“St. Valentine to me is that example of trying to help marriage be what it should be. To help couples understand that sometimes it’s about sacrifice,” McDowell said.
