National Post (National Edition)
A Valentine’s Day dilemma for Catholics.
VALENTINE’S DAY AND ASH WEDNESDAY ARE ON THE SAME DATE. WHAT WILL CATHOLICS DO?
Ash Wednesday this year is also Valentine’s Day, two different ways of marking time. All calendars are liturgical in a broad sense, meaning that our holidays — literally, “holy days” — reflect those things that are most important to us, the realities that we put at the heart of our culture. At the heart of every culture is the common “cult,” whatever God, or gods, or idols that we worship.
The coincidence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day invites us to think about our common cult.
For Catholics, Ash Wednesday is a day of fasting, and abstinence from meat. That means no festive Valentine’s dinner for couples, or exchanging candies for children at school. Those things should be shifted to another day — Mardi Gras being an obvious example.
It doesn’t happen that often. Since 1900, Ash Wednesday has fallen on Valentine’s Day only three times: in 1923, 1934 and 1945. Looking ahead it will fall on Valentine’s Day again in 2024 and 2029 and then not again for the rest of the century. So in 200 years, it will happen six times. We should be pleased this year that we have the opportunity to think about the important truths upon which we build our lives.
Valentine’s Day is a vague nod toward the liturgical observance of the saints, the feast day of a saint about which few know anything. It has lost any religious character, in the same way that many observe St. Patrick’s Day without any reference to the saint, but as an ethnic or national day, sometimes marked by drunkenness that would make the saint ashamed indeed.
That does not mean it is without any merit. It can be corrupted to celebrate lust alone, but Valentine’s can be a time to give thanks for the blessing of romantic love, and to honour the beloved with acts of kindness and generosity.
At the same time, Valentine’s is a triumph of sentiment, which is related to real love but falls far short. That Valentine’s Day has grown in cultural prominence over the past generations indicates the rise of sentiment at the expense of the more durable reality of true love.
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, a period of penance and discipline before the events of Holy Week — the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus. Lent might appear to be too austere to be thought of in the context of love. That confuses, though, emotional sentiment with the reality of love.
The measure of love is not kind words or sweet gestures, no matter how sincere. They are welcome, to be sure, but love proves itself in times of sacrifice. To love genuinely is to sacrifice my good for the good of the beloved, for the beloved’s own sake, not my own interest. That’s why the test of love is more keeping vigil at the sickbed than it is a romantic getaway.
We desire love rather than sentiment because we desire what endures. True love endures; sentiment passes away.
On Ash Wednesday, when the priest puts the ashes — a traditional mark of repentance — on the head of those receiving them, he says, “remember thou are dust and to dust you shall return.” Everything passes away. We, too, will pass away.
In the passage from St. Paul often read at weddings, the apostle notes that even knowledge and prophecies will pass away, but that “faith, hope and love abide” and that the “greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13).
Lent prepares us to remember the love of God which endures and makes it possible for us to hope in the endurance of our loves. If the measure of love is sacrifice, then the cross of Christ shows us love beyond measure. Indeed, it is a love that is stronger even than death. Remember thou are dust, but your return to dust is not the final word, as surely as Easter follows Good Friday.
Whatever good Valentine’s Day promotes, it remains always inadequate. Among that which returns to dust and ashes are the greeting cards and the decorations and the flowers and the jewelry.
Lent begins with the most salient point, with the problem that needs to be solved, with the mystery of death that reduces everything to dust. It begins there that we might receive a message of love from God — a “valentine” we might say this year. Amidst the ashes, it is as though He says to us: “You are dust, but my love means that you are not only that, and that you are meant to abide, not in the decay of the grave, but in the love of God, manifest on the cross.”
Happy Valentine’s? Perhaps. But a much happier Ash Wednesday!