This year, Lent begins on Valentine’s Day, for Ash Wednesday falls on Feb. 14. Liturgically, of course, it doesn’t make any difference, for the Church dropped the celebration of St. Valentine from the calendar and replaced it with the memorial of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Valentines’ Day is a purely secular celebration.
Nonetheless, I find the juxtaposition discombobulating. Valentines’ Day may be a secular feast with no connection to Church celebrations, but it has snuggled itself into our culture like an irresistibly charming kitten, and even in the cloister we find those little candy hearts with the laughable maxims appearing at our meals. Life without Valentines’ Day would be more serious but less endearing. After all, everyone loves a lover!
Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday, is a serious business. It is a time of spiritual discipline. Yet the word Lent actually has nothing serious about it. It comes from the Middle English word “lente” meaning “springtime.” Springtime and valentines go very well together. Can we somehow fit Ash Wednesday and Valentines’ Day together? It’s very tempting to try!
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of Lent, which ends at the Easter Vigil on the night of Holy Saturday. The night of the Easter Vigil begins with the Exultet, that glorious proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection: “This is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day … O truly blessed night, when things of heaven are wed to those of earth, and the divine to the human.” So Lent ends in a wedding, the wedding of heaven and earth, of God with us in Jesus Christ.
A wedding is preceded by a courtship. There is a courtship described in the Bible that has long been a cherished text of the mystics. The Song of Songs is a series of poems describing the love between the Bride and the Bridegroom. Jesus called himself the Bridegroom and the Church has always seen the Song of Songs as a lyrical description of the love between Jesus and each believer.
In the Song, the Bride and the Bridegroom sing of their love, and the Bride tells how she went out searching for “the one my soul loves.” She sought him throughout the city, and she did find him, but later, when he came to seek her, she delayed in opening to him, protesting, “I had put off my garment; how could I put it on again? I had bathed my feet; how could I soil them?” This feeble excuse caused her to lose her beloved, for, “I opened to my beloved, but my beloved had turned and was gone . . .”
We also delay in responding to Jesus’s calls and we neglect his graces. Lent wakens us to what we have lost, and we, too, go about seeking the one we love. We find him on the cross and when we join him there, we can say with the Bride, “Before I was aware, my fancy set me in a chariot beside my prince.” Then united with him in his resurrection, we “come up from the wilderness, leaning upon our beloved.” In him, we shine forth “like the dawn, fair as the moon, bright as the sun, terrible as an army with banners.”
Lent can truly be a time of courtship as we seek the one who took on our suffering so that we can take on his glory. There is a German art song by Brahms entitled, “Es Liebt Sich So Lieblich Im Lenze.” The correct translation is “Love is so lovely in springtime,” but as we join with the Bride to seek our beloved I think we can also translate it as “Love is so lovely in Lent.” Giving up something for Lent is a solidly established custom. It is seen as a good spiritual practice that detaches us from something that we cherish to help us focus on Jesus, the one we love.
But the phrase “to give up” doesn’t just mean doing without. It also means, quite literally, to give upward, to hand something up to God, and to hand something up to God is to make it holy, for God sanctifies everything He touches.
So when we have given up chocolate or coffee or our cellphone or the internet or whatever it is that we have sacrificed for Lent, it might be surprising to realize that when God gives it back to us it has become holy, for that is what it means to sacrifice: sacrum facere, to “make something holy”.
Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.