A Lenten Romance
The Two Crowns, by Sir Frank Dicksee, oil on canvas, 1900
Valentine's Day, that annual day of romantic obligation and expectation, has come and gone. Its posh dining and gifts, its chocolate and strong drinks, the red petals and cards of its sentiment, its licit and illicit seductions, and even its stinging loneliness is behind us now. The pressure and enjoyment have both passed; we are relieved and disppointed.
This year, Valentine's Day fell on Ash Wednesday, that somber day of prayer and fasting which kicks off the season of Lent. Foreheads are crossed in ash, that one might “remember you are dust, and unto dust you shall return” with a "sackcloth and ashes" kind of repentance. Christians are to make the 40 days of Lent a concerted personal effort at self-denial in loving imitation of Christ's ultimate sacrifice: death on the cross.
That Valentine's and Ash Wednesday should overlap is a rather infrequent occurrence—except recently. They happen together in 2018, 2024, and 2029, but barring this current cluster, not since 1934, and not again until 2170. I am not an astronomer or a theologian, only a wife and mother, so I cannot tell you if there is any cosmic or divine significance in these days. I can only say that I find this cluster of overlaps quite provoking, that they tug me deep into the wonder of love.
For in the juxtaposition of Valentine’s and Ash Wednesday, I think I hear a whisper of a very old question. It is the question Jesus asked of St. Peter three times, the one that I can’t help but think haunted him for the rest of his life, just as it haunts each of us. It is the solitary question that persists in the human heart, the one our very souls hang upon, the simple and profound: “Do you love me?"
What we want—what every human heart wants—is a palpable "yes" to this question. We long to be loved; we long, too, to give love. Our nation just spent a staggering $26 billion dollars on Valentine's Day. That's how much we desire to love and be loved.
Perhaps that's how easy it is, too, to get caught up in love's show, to mistake the show for love. How many times have we preferred to make the answer to "Do you love me" one that we could express through the sentiment, attraction, excitement, and desire of Valentine's Day—as if this were love’s summit? But if we have ever been in a serious relationship, particularly the yoke of marriage, we know that Valentine's Day shows will not sustain a love that is shaky and immature, or shrinking, or empty. We can’t help it; our hearts crave something more than love's one-day show. We long for a “yes" that does not fade with the lipstick and roses, a love that does not end in an empty plate or glass or box or word or bed.
The “yes" we want to the question of “Do you love me?” looks less like a colorful Valentine’s fling, and a lot more like something stretching out from the gate of Ash Wednesday. It is not, merely, a “yes" which fades with a pious forehead cross or an empty pew, but a gritty Lenten romance, a stooped and dusty love that stumbles on through the pain and ash, bowed low under the splintered beams of sacrifice. It is a love that ignores the easy exits, trudging willingly uphill to the guarantee of death. It is the love of that one, holy and committed, lifelong spouse: the husband who is ready to die a million big and little deaths for his wife, to give everything he has and is to love her as Christ loves the church; the wife, who does not compete with her husband for power, but accommodates him with a gentle acceptance, opening her mouth—not to cut him down—but to build him up, aiming, always, to please him, and thereby, Christ.
Ultimately, we want the love which Lent points us to: that greatest of loves, the love of Christ, Himself—that Love that is Christ, Himself. We want the Love which hangs from the cross in answer to our heart's deepest question, His arms in wide embrace, as if to say, “Yes, I love you. See how much I love you?”
It is an Easter Love, we want, a salvific Love, a Love “as strong as death,” and stronger. It is a Love that doesn’t end in pain and death on a cross, but one that turns to us from it, hearing our pleas to be noticed and remembered, looking upon us in our most pitiful state—conrite and hung up, as we always are, in sin—a Love that does not, then, berate us, does not abandon us, but tells of a near and coming glory. We want the Love that even from its own cross, looks at our thieving, miserable soul with an infinite compassion, with a completeness of charity, with the eternal romance—that hope-filled promise of Christ that tells us we are still loved, still wanted, still desired forever in heaven—Love's promise, repeated to us from the piercing height of the cross: “you shall be with me in paradise.”
