Happy Valentine's Day!

Partly because the feast of the martyr Valentine has been hijacked by our materialistic society as an excuse for excessive consumerism, and partly because his feast is no longer on the regular liturgical calendar (and partly too because there is a certain pleasure in being contrary), I insist upon wishing everyone a good feast of Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius.  Today, however, in the face of the strange coinciding of the world's celebration of Valentine's Day with the Church's celebration of Ash Wednesday, I choose to pay more heed to the former than I do typically.

Why, you might ask, would I care more about Valentine's Day when it falls on the first day of Lent than when it happens during ordinary time?  Well, because then it corresponds more closely to the true valentine given by the martyr: the gift of his life.

And what is Ash Wednesday then but a valentine from God to us?

So perhaps that isn't quite the sort of cheery valentine you would expect from a God who loves you.  After all, a crown of thorns and a cross certainly symbolize more pain than any of us would like to consider.  And those chilling words: Remember, man, that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.

Yet for a God who loves you far more than you could ever think of loving yourself and who wants you to let go of these shadows here below in order to find Him, and ultimately to live with Him forever, it is the only suitable valentine to send.  If He sends flowers, they have their thorns.  He does not want to lull us into a false sense of security, but to shake us from our lethargy, to transform our hearts by shaking out the lies we tell ourselves because it is easier to believe them than it is to believe in a God who works miracles through suffering.

The purpose of His letter of love, though, is not to crush us in suffering.  Rather, it is to bring us to perfect joy.

For what greater joy is there than in the truth?  And the truth is that we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us.  (See Romans 8:37.)  We need nothing of this world to make us happy, but only a relationship with our Beloved who speaks to us through every moment of every day, His voice too shrouded in the shadows.

The men marked of the Cross of Christ

Go gaily in the dark.

~G.K. Chesterton

Go Gaily in the Dark

“The men of the East may spell the stars,
And times and triumphs mark,
But the men signed of the cross of Christ
Go gaily in the dark.”

-The Ballad of the White Horse, by G.K. Chesterton

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Today we celebrate that new awakening, that springtime, that journey beginning once more toward the heavenly Jerusalem.  In the words of Pope Francis:

"Lent comes providentially to reawaken us, to shake us from our lethargy."

For all the comforts and pleasures of this world lull us into a sort of sleep and a false security.  Like one who succumbs to anesthesia, we do not realize that we are falling asleep even as we fight it.  Wisely, the Church declares a time for us to rise out of that slumber, to deprive ourselves even of that which we consider necessary for a time in order to raise our eyes to the heavens.

"Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."

Those words shatter our self-assured world of grasping control.  For what can dust achieve of itself?  Nothing.  And all shall return to nothing.

Oh what folly is our seriousness!  Our earnest attempts to make eternal bliss here upon earth last but a little while.  Someday we must face the truth that all here is temporary.  Someday we must face the reality of death.

Yet if we face death now, how lightly we could take ourselves!  We would no longer care so desperately for our plans and schemes.  We would no longer cling to all that we hold dear which will pass away with this earthly life.  We would take such bold risks and dare to love courageously.

"Remember that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."