Who Was St. Valentine?

So who was St. Valentine?  Was he a great lover a la Casanova?  Was he even a real person?

I copied this today from Yahoo.    If you haven’t already read it, I thought it was interesting and wanted to share ...


According to Catholic Online, St. Valentine was very real, but he probably wasn't a smooth operator with the ladies.

"Valentine was a holy priest in Rome, who, with St. Marius and his family, assisted the martyrs in the persecution under Claudius II." For his trouble, Valentine was beaten and then executed after authorities were unable to get him to renounce his faith. His death occurred on February 14.

As with many events that occurred so long ago, other theories abound. Indeed, there were several different Valentines, and nobody is 100 percent sure which one was which. Some believe he was a priest, others believe he was a bishop, some believe he was a combination of the two, and still others believe he was someone else entirely. All that said, there is little doubt among experts that Valentine did exist in one form or another.

As for how the holiday came to represent love and kisses, there are few different theories for that as well. According to blog specializing in saints, "some believe the Romans had a mid-February custom where boys drew the names of girls in honor of the sex and fertility goddess, Februata Juno." Others feel the custom of greetings "stems from the belief that birds begin to pair on that date."

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

Collections

Ahh all those things we love to collect, all the stuff we have surrounding us.  To me, like I’m sure you, it’s not just stuff.  What possesses us to start our collections?  Could it be for inspiration, maybe it belonged to someone special in our lives and we were inspired to continue the tradition, or something we latched onto when we were younger.  Or just because…    I often think, “what will happen to all my stuff?”  I guess it would be like the stuff we find at flea markets that make us wonder who belonged to all this stuff? And what stories those things could tell us.

Over the years I think I’ve started & stopped collecting all sorts of different things, antiques, shells, bears, palm trees, suns, mermaids, angels, hearts, and can’t forget the Christmas reindeer.  However, there are just a couple of things I don’t ever get tired of collecting, Shells and Hearts (oh and the Christmas reindeer). 

 Perhaps what inspired me to start collecting hearts is not just for their shape but because hearts are used as prevalent symbols representing love.  As for shells, well I’ve been collecting shells ever since I was a little girl and always love spending time at the beach, and really, who can’t resist picking up a cool looking shell?