The St Valentine's Day Massacre

On Feb 14, 1929, St Valentine’s Day, 7 men from Chicago's North Side Irish Gang led by Bugs Moran were gunned down by members of Al Capone's south side Italian gang as part of the Prohibition Era's underworld conflict. This horrific event has come to be known as the St Valentine's Day Massacre. Another St Valentine's Day massacre occurs annually in our day. We have massacred what the day was originally all about. Church tradition has honored St Valentine's day as one of the oldest Christian holy-days (holidays) we have. According to fairly sound tradition, a man named Valentine was a priest during the reign of Emperor Claudius (268-270AD). At the time, Claudius was heavily recruiting men to serve as soldiers for his wars without much success. The men preferred not to leave their wives, families and sweethearts to fight in foreign lands. Because of this, Claudius became angry and declared that no more marriages could be performed and all engagements were canceled. Valentine thought this to be unfair and secretly married Christian couples in his parish. When Claudius found out, he threw Valentine in prison where he died on February 14, 269 A.D. In 496 Pope Gelasius declared Feb 14 to be the day to honor St. Valentine. Through the centuries the Christian holiday became a time to exchange love messages and St. Valentine became the patron saint of lovers. Unfortunately, due to the onslaught of sexual messages all around us, Valentine's Biblical views of love and sex have been massacred and sexual purity has begun to be seen as joyless and strict rather than that which guards and promotes the highest and most pleasurable views of sex possible. The message of grace has come to redeem our past failures and to give us hope for the future...perhaps this wondrous, amazing, scandalous message of grace can even redeem what we've done to Valentine's Day!