I used to hate Valentine’s Day.

It’s a Hallmark holiday

I’d say.

It’s an excuse to buy somebody more stuff

I’d say.

It’s about making the women in our lives happy

I’d say.

I was much more cynical then.

At its root, the problem I had with the way we celebrate Valentine’s Day is that it always seemed like the day men treat women the way they ought to want to treat them all the time. And it is also the day in which women expect to be treated special and different: the day a man proves to the woman he loves how much he really loves her.

I found the whole sport of Valentine’s Day exhausting. The whole part where men and women talk about their expectations in general, but not actually to the people who need to hear it: namely the loved one. The one they supposedly care so much about.

What I hated about Valentine’s Day was the devotion to this ridiculous competition.

What saves Valentine’s Day for me is what it is really about. Why we think it is a day for love and for lovers.

We have honored February 14th as the Feast of Saint Valentine for centuries. Little is known about the man other than that he was a 4th Century Roman who was martyred. But one of the stories about St. Valentine that endures is a possible reason for his execution.

Valentine broke the law like a badass, presiding at the weddings of Christians during a time in which giving any aid or comfort to them was a crime. He used the sacramental rite of holy matrimony as civil disobedience and revealed GOD’s love when the authorities said no. This is civil disobedience at the highest order. Like the man in Florida feeding the homeless, except instead of a jerk mayor, there was a bloodthirsty emperor.

At a time in which we have plenty of people claiming to stand for GOD so that they can oppress people, we should heed what St. Valentine stood for: love. Not Hallmark or games or giving random crap to somebody you love because you have to. He stood for love itself; love that comes from GOD; love shared between two people; at a time when love was against the law. He stood for helping people when helping people was against the law. He revealed that no matter what Rome thought, GOD had different things in mind for us.

Of course they killed him, so there’s that.

If you want to celebrate Valentine’s Day today, my advice is to do it in a way St. Valentine would want you to. With radical, unbound love. The kind that can get you into trouble.