Olympic Gold Medals For Loving?
Valentine's Day is always a fun holiday when many Christians take advantage of the opportunity to announce their love or appreciation of others with happy little written love messages. It's a day of heart opening even for those who may not have opened their hearts so much during other times of the year.
This year the heart opening that occurs surrounding Valentine's Day will surely be many orders of magnitude greater than usual because of the enormous good will generated by the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City with the slogan of the games, "Light the fire within!" Whether it's the burning love of going for the gold in an event or the compassionate love of feeling for athletes who have encountered unexpected difficulties, the fire that is lit within is always the fire of love.
What if you could win a gold medal for loving?
Strangely enough, the Olympic Games and Valentine's Day have a slightly connecting thread in history. The early Christian Church in Rome worked very hard to either abolish popular pagan practices which they saw as negative influences on their converts or substitute a "cleaned up" and acceptable Christian version. Christians were successful in abolishing the Olympic games altogether for many centuries, but it was harder to wipe out totally the ancient Lupercian celebration of the rite of passage, so it became transformed into Valentine's Day.
In A.D. 496, Pope Gelasius was powerful enough to attempt outlawing the Lupercian festival, a common pagan fertility rite which Romans had practiced at least since the fourth century B.C. In this practice, once a year Roman citizens had always honored one of their gods, Lupercus, and celebrated young people’s rite of passage to adulthood by holding a lottery in mid-February. The names of teenage girls who were otherwise unspoken for were placed in a container and drawn at random by teenage men. By means of this lottery young men and women were assigned to each other as companions for their mutual pleasure for the duration of a year.
Church leaders, knowing the people loved the chance element of this lottery because they enjoyed all games of mystery and destiny, attempted to substitute a lottery of their own. Instead of names of teenage girls, names of Christian saints were placed in the container. The idea was for both men and women to pick saint's names and then for the coming year try their best to imitate the life of the saint whose name they had drawn.
Probably because of the long lasting tradition the ancient Lupercian lottery had spawned of hoping to find a mate in mid-February, a Christian saint whose name was associated in legend with aiding the desires of young lovers eventually became associated with the new lottery as a kind of patron saint. If the name of the earlier Roman Emperor, Valentinian, ever had anything to do with this mid-February holiday, it's been well overshadowed. The Church built their new tradition using a Christian named Valentinus who in some Christian circles was thought of as a saint.
Valentinus was a Christian bishop who had been martyred in the third century A.D. supposedly because of his illegal activities on the behalf of young lovers. In 270 A.D. Emperor Claudius II had issued an edict forbidding marriage to young men of soldiering age since he believed that married men made poor soldiers because they would be in resistance to leaving their families and going into battle. The story the Church has always fostered features Valentinus, Bishop of Interamna, feeling strongly that this edict was unfair and inviting young lovers to come to him in secret to be married.
When Claudius found out that Valentinus was officiating secret marriages, he ordered Valentinus to be arrested and brought before him for judgment. When Valentinus defended his practices in the name of Christianity and implied that Christianity somehow outranked the Emperor who was considered divine, he was sentenced to be executed.
By the end of the 5th century stories had circulated for over 200 years that during the time Valentinus was in prison waiting execution he corresponded with those of his ministry by sending little letters and notes expressing great love and affection.
There are also stories, not so far fetched, of Valentinus even before ever going to prison making his way from house to house in his district leaving little notes of joy and admiration to bring people cheer. Apparently Valentinus loved to write uplifting notes and we can imagine that if there had been in those days an Olympic event in opening hearts and spreading love he might have been favored to win the gold.
In fact, in one endearing version of Valentinus' story which is probably a fictionalized Christian teaching version, it is told that while Valentinus was in prison he fell in love with Asterius, the blind daughter of the jailer, and through his prayers her sight was miraculously restored. Romanticized tradition tells us that his last pre-death message to Asterius was signed: "Your Valentine."
Anyway, it took many years for this new Christian tradition to take hold but eventually at least in some respects the Lupercian festival became replaced by St. Valentine's Day. The lottery with saints' names fizzled out quickly, but young people took a cue from this new patron saint, Valentinus, and began giving handwritten greetings of affection in mid-February to those whom they wished to know about their admiration and affection.
The remainder of the story of Valentine's Day you can imagine.
But what can hardly be imagined, because it is so far beyond imagination, is how far this heart opening love can really be taken.
What if the intoxicating romantic love that sweeps off their feet those who by serendipity find themselves together and "smitten by cupid" is not the only "whole new world" but rather a hint of the first of many whole new worlds to come, the tiny tip of a titanic iceberg?
What if underneath the surface there is a love so huge and overwhelmingly magnificent that it makes earthly love seem like a close encounter of only the very first kind?
We are thrilled to watch those athletes in the Olympic games who are extolled as "all heart," who are said to "reach deep inside and give all of themselves," whose achievements we are told "seem impossible." Such athletes speak to something deep, deep inside ourselves which calls us to go for the gold ourselves.
What if waiting in heaven for each of us to win is a gold medal in loving?
What if heaven itself could be experienced on earth and romantic love is only the first baby step approximation?
How would we ever win such a gold medal? How would we ever open ourselves to a love that is so far beyond normal earthly experience that, like the feats of some Olympic athletes, it "seems impossible?"
A course of instruction and inspiration given by the Holy Spirit,
COURSE IN MIRACULOUS RELATIONSHIPS, might be a good start. This course approaches heart opening from the viewpoint of relationships because that's where most people start in their minds. But listen inside and see if the Holy Spirit intended this course as preparation for a much, much greater experience than even the most blissful romantic love.
When two of our beloved friends here at the Center For Total Enlightenment in Salt Lake City, a married couple, began practicing the lessons of COURSE IN MIRACULOUS RELATIONSHIPS, their relationship became glorified beyond what they could have dreamed and their love exploded far beyond their relationship. After such opening, they would no longer be tempted to imitate Christian saints as in the substitute lottery. They have become saints.
Look inside. You might feel inspired to treat yourself to a little "Olympic training" using COURSE IN MIRACULOUS RELATIONSHIPS. Or if you have already experienced the rewards of heart opening you might hear happy guidance to email the good news of this easy to understand course to all your friends and relatives as a Valentine's Day gift.
In any event, you can make a decision this February to think of everything you do all day long every day as an Olympic event. And you can make a determination to say "I love you!" in your mind to everybody, every thing, every place, every situation, and every circumstance as if you not only wanted to be like St. Valentine, but were determined to outperform St. Valentine in the Olympics of heart opening love.
To really feel the Olympic spirit, you can rejoice in telling yourself ten thousand times a day:
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