Share Your Love This Week – Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

Share Your Love This Week – Dr. Ed Iannuccilli

The hallmark of St. Valentine’s Day is love. With all that is happening in our difficult worlds, it is the opportunity to give love more consideration, remembering how much it entails the sentiments of care and commitment. It should include many in your sphere.

Thoughts of love and friendship engender so many good feelings; reflections that will serve us well as we continue to manage in such difficult times.

The holiday is Diane’s favorite, as she has directed her energies to many Valentine’s Day dinner parties over the years; many of them with live music. This year, she will forgo her efforts in honor of safety, but that does not mean the day will be forgotten. 

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What is the origin of Valentine’s Day? There are many stories of the saint for whom the day has been named. I will stick to the one oft repeated.

Saint Valentine was a Roman priest and physician who suffered martyrdom during the persecution of Christians by the emperor Claudius II Gothicus in 270 CE. Praying for the sick, Valentine is said to have restored the sight of his jailer’s young daughter, Julia, and he, in turn, became smitten. Valentine wrote a love letter to Julia and signed it, ‘Your Valentine’. And thus, the story begins, albeit some years after his canonization.

From the high middle ages, this Saint’s Day has been associated with a tradition of the noble affection of lovers, engaged couples, and joyful marriages. His simple love letter and his many good works have engendered a host of expressions of love over and above those of roses and chocolates.

And thus, I am so reminded because I am reading for the second time a book by Iris Origo, “War in Val D’Orcia.” Origo was an intriguing, perceptive and brilliant historian whose works remain widely admired. She grew up in Italy with her Irish mother after the death of her wealthy American father. They settled in the Villa Medici in Florence, where they became part of the colorful and privileged Anglo-Florentine set that included the authors Edith Wharton and Harold Acton, and the Berensons, well known historians.

When Iris married Antonio Origo, they bought and revived La Foce, a derelict stretch in the beautiful Val d’Orcia Valley in Tuscany and created an estate that thrives to this day. During World War II, they sided with the Allies, taking considerable risks in protecting children and sheltering partisans. Iris’s diary from that time is a modern classic. Her story leads me to this wonderful quote of St. Catherine of Siena, rooted in love, on Iris Orego’s tombstone:

Chi piu conosce piu ama, piu amando piu giusta.

The more you know, the more you love, and by loving more, the more you enjoy.

While many of us enjoy the chocolates, flowers, and romance in celebration of the patron Saint Valentine, I suggest you sit back and reflect; know more, love more, enjoy more.

Can you fit LOVE into your day? And share it with many?

Call a friend.

Dr. Ed Iannuccilli is the author of three popular memoirs, “Growing up Italian; Grandfather’s Fig Tree and Other Stories”, “What Ever Happened to Sunday Dinner” and “My Story Continues: From Neighborhood to Junior High.”  Learn more here.