In picking the date, the early Church Fathers attempted to displace the pagan ritual Lupercalia, celebrated in the middle of February. The Lupercalia festival honored Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome who, according to myth, were raised by wolves. The ritual involved a lottery pairing teenage boys and girls as sexual partners for the year. The early Christian Fathers attempted to transform this pagan ritual into something higher. St. Valentine's Day came to be associated, not with sexual license, but with love, romance, and marriage.
Sex is something more than bodily pleasure.
In the love of husband and wife, the pleasure of sex is not diminished but heightened and made more abiding. As love unites the family it also, in another form, unites citizens, and all of mankind as children of God. Valentine's Day, then, concerns the highest thing in us. Last May, Institute Senior Fellow Thomas G. West was asked by the student body to deliver the commencement address at the University of Dallas.