This year Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine’s Day. On one hand, it seems an odd mix – ashes and valentines, repentance and love, ash gray and rose red (Ohio State fans find that a perfect match) – but there is perhaps something fitting in celebrating these two remembrances on the same day. For, Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday are both rooted in love – love for one another, our love for God, and God’s love for us.
Valentine’s Day was originally a religious holiday, a feast day honoring the lives of various St. Valentines. Today, it is for us a secular holiday marked by expressions of love (sponsored by the Association of Florists, Hallmark, and the Chocolate Coalition of America). On Valentine’s Day we express our love for others through cards and flowers, chocolates, and those little candy hearts of my youth (Be Mine! I luv U!) which may have been the precursors to text messaging.
Ash Wednesday begins our 40-day journey through Lent to Holy Week. It is a day marked by repentance, prayer, and self-reflection, a day to set out on a Lenten journey that will end at the cross and the empty tomb where God’s great love for us is expressed in profoundly tangible ways. As ashes are imposed on our foreheads, we commit to that journey; that commitment is itself an act of love for God. As ashes mark our foreheads, we are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return, but even as we recall that sobering truth, we are reminded of Paul’s words that nothing, not even death, can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Celebrating Ash Wednesday is an act of humble contrition, reminding us of our mortality, and it is an act of faith, bearing witness to our commitment to the God who loves us without end.
This year, I encourage you to observe both days on February 14. Observe Valentine’s Day for the sake of those you love, and observe Ash Wednesday for the sake of the God who loves you. For in doing so, we live into the Great Commandment: Love God with all that you are, and love your neighbor as yourself!
— John Peterson
