“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.” Today is all about the heart, both outside the church and inside. It’s rare for Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday to coincide—just twice in the last 80 years.
Plenty of people have taken advantage of this rare overlap to explore the humorous side of it all. One clever person created a series of Valentine heart candies, the kind with messages like “True Love,” “Happy 2ghtr,” or “UR Cute” but gave them a distinctly Lenten character: “Repent,” “Dust 2 Dust,” and UR Mortal.” Another posted a photo suggesting that, instead of imposing ashes in the shape of a cross this year, a heart shape might be nice. Now that expresses the mood of Psalm 103: God knows that we are dust, yet this dust is the object of God’s care. Still, the sign of the cross remains the clearest revelation of God’s heartfelt compassion and love. And there was even a Valentine’s poem that noticed the word ‘Lent’ is right in the middle of the word, ‘Valentine.’ “Valentines are red, Wednesday’s ashes are grey. You can’t spell Valentine without ‘Lent’ on this day.” All very clever. Only is there something deeper and worth exploring in this rare confluence of Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day?
Valentine’s Day is for romantic love, of course. The season of Lent, in contrast, focuses on the sacrificial love of Jesus. But Jesus’ sacrificial love is at least hinted at in the secular celebration, too. So many Valentines cards are about ‘going to the end of the earth for you,’ or ‘giving my all for you,’ or ‘loving you with all my heart.’ All these themes point to a deep commitment that goes beyond romantic love, a commitment the scriptures call steadfast love, a love that endures through the ups and downs of life. This is the love the New Testament calls agape—the unconditional, self-giving, sacrificial love of God in Jesus Christ who gave his all for us and says to us, “Love one another as I have loved you.”
In today’s second reading, St Paul invites us to turn and return to this love of God in Jesus. “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” This is how Lent starts each year: with a call to turn and return to God. It is an offer to be reconciled with our first love, our true love, a Valentine of sorts with your name on it. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Our response, then, to the God who first loved us? “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” Our response is to make God’s love our own. “Beloved, let us love one another.”
We can put a picture to God’s reconciling love in a way that does link nicely with Valentine’s Day. In Latin, the word for eyelash is ‘cilia.’ Even better than having the word ‘Lent’ in the middle of the word ‘Valentine,’ the Latin word ‘cilia’ is right in the middle of the word ‘reconciliation.’ Reconciliation then, describes a relationship restored as two people become eyelash to eyelash with one another: intimate, close. This is how close God comes to us in Jesus Christ. After a long estrangement—an estrangement described in the Bible as sin, death, the present evil age, hardness of heart—God’s response is forgiveness, newness of life, adoption as children, and creating a new heart in us. Jesus, in his life, death, and resurrection shows us how deeply God desires us and cares for the people he has made. “God made Christ to be sin, who knew no sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.” This is God’s work of reconciliation. In Jesus Christ, God comes eyelash to eyelash with the people he loves, the knowledge of the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ as gift and grace.
Today, we are invited to make God’s gift of reconciliation our own. “We urge you not to accept the grace of God in vain,” our second reading says. Or, in another place, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart.” God has come to us in love through Jesus Christ. How will you respond?
A 12th century monk by the name of Aelred said that when it comes to our physical bodies, we deceive ourselves if we think we don’t need exercise. This is also true, Aelred says, of our spiritual lives. The practices of Lent are exercises to work out the love of God already given us in Jesus Christ and to keep our hearts from getting hard: of prayer, orienting our lives to God instead of depleting our time and energy on things that don’t really matter; of generosity and fasting, reminding us that our identity and worth in God are not determined by what we earn or accomplish or consume; of works of love because in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, a new world is born and, with it, a new way of living; of repentance, making an honest self-examination and a candid confession of all the ways we fall short of God’s desires—because each of us does—and trusting that when we turn back to the Lord our Lord is already turned toward us in forgiveness; and of our mortality, that we are dust and to dust we shall return, reminding us that we don’t have unlimited time to change our lives. Love, in the Christian sense, is something that you do, a way to live out God’s self-giving love, to tend and nurture life in God, storing up treasures in heaven, as Jesus describes. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
“If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart.” It’s a providential link, this confluence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday. Because both are matters of the heart: God’s heart and ours. In Jesus, and his love that goes to the end of the earth for us, goes even to the grave for us, we see the reconciling work of God, the very heart of God—compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. Our response? To say yes to that love and not take the grace of God in vain, to be reconciled to God and live as people of reconciliation and hope, eyelash to eyelash with the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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