Fruit of the Same Tree: St. Valentine and Ash Wednesday

Fruit of the Same Tree

St. Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday, believe it or not, are fruit of the same tree. Granted, that’s not apparent to everybody. The last time the two feasts shared the same space on the calendar a priest well known on theh internet posted the following: “This year nothing says happy Valentine’s Day like taking your date to get your ashes in church and reminding each other that one day you are both going to die.”  

Romantic, no? Fr. was making a knowing nod to the fact that some people don’t see the convergence. And there does, on the surface, appear to be a conflict between bright pink hearts on the one hand, and ashes against a deep purple backdrop on the other. In my own diocese the bishop has already pre-emptively announced that he will not be granting any dispensations from the mortifications of Ash Wednesday in deference to the yearly love fest.

“Remember, Man . . .”

But is there a conflict, really? The coincidence of these two days should not be a problem for us if we hold to the Faith As Handed Down To Us.  The “Valentine’s Day” promoted by retailers and other secular sources, after all, started out as the Feast of St. Valentine, who was a 3rd century Christian martyr. Not only do both observances spring from the same Christian tradition, they actually complement each other in a way that is particularly relevant to our current situation.

“Remember that you are dust . . .”

     Let’s start with Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of the great penitential season of Lent. Its name comes, naturally, from the imposition of ashes on the forehead, along with the admonition “remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.”

The Fall

This reminder of our dusty origin is taken from Genesis 3:19, at which point the Lord is expelling Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. This after our first parents have eaten, at Satan’ behest, from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In our Ash Wednesday observances we have a concrete reminder that, through original sin and its effects, The Fall is still an operative reality in our lives.  

The Fall destroyed the close relationship between humanity and God, which we see when Adam and Eve hide from their Creator in the Garden. It likewise creates division in the one-flesh union between the two of them. Consequently, they now feel the need to hide their bodies from each other with clothes, since each now feels the greedy power of lust as a consequence of original sin, and perceives it in the other.

Carnal Desire

Concupiscence is the theological term for the attraction to sin that is one of the consequences of Original Sin. Lust is by no means its only manifestation, but it has always been one of its most prominent features, and one which heavily overshadows our age. In fact, lust lies at the heart of virtually every major point on which the secular world, and the culture of dissent within the Church that is secularism’s close ally, takes issue with traditional Catholic moral teaching.  Lust permeates our popular culture.  

It is not surprising, then, that as the Feast of St. Valentine has been gradually transformed into the bacchanalia known as Valentine’s Day (or sometimes simply “V” Day) it has become, more or less, a straightforward celebration of carnal desire.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her . . . (Eph 5:25-26)

    

Carnality, however, was not the program of the real St. Valentine (as I detail in a previous post, “St. Valentine, Patron of Agape”). The historic Valentine was put to death by the Romans, according to some accounts, for consecrating Christian marriages.  Now, the Romans married as much as anyone else, there was no crime in presiding over marriages per se.  The crime was in the consecrating of Christian marriages.  St. Valentine was a champion of marriage as raised to a sacrament by Jesus Christ.  He willingly sacrificed his own life for this understanding of marriage.

The Convergence

It is here that we begin to see the convergence between the supposedly divergent observations of Ash Wednesday and St. Valentine’s Day.  We see how they can be the fruit of the same tree. On Ash Wednesday we are called to repent, to turn aside from concupiscence in all its forms and surrender ourselves to Christ.  The Christian marriage for which St. Valentine gave his life likewise calls us to turn aside from selfish lust, and, in imitation of Jesus, sacrifice ourselves for our spouse.  As St. Paul says:

. . . walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph 5:2-3)

Later he adds:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the Church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her . . . (Eph 5:25-26)

Christian love consists in sacrificing oneself for the good of others, and a Christian expresses sexual love precisely by sacrificing oneself for one’s wife or husband within the sacramental covenant of marriage.  Most often this also includes sacrificing one’s own wants, desires, and comfort for the good of the children that result from the union.

Sanctify Each Other

     Let’s return for a moment to that first human marriage in the Garden of Eden. We saw how concupiscence is an impediment to love: love between the spouses, and love between the spouses and God.  Turning away from sin (i.e., repenting) is the only thing that makes true love possible. If we want true love, we must indeed “Repent and believe the Gospel”.

     Love and Repentance, fruit of the same tree. This Ash Wednesday my date, as the internet priest put it, will be my lovely bride. That is, my sweetheart of more years than I care to enumerate (along with at least one of our fair offspring).  We’re going to church and getting our ashes  .  .  .  that we might sanctify each other.

Featured image top of page: Ash Wednesday, by Julian Falat, 1877

Please see also:

Remember That You Are Dust – But That’s Not All

The Midpoint Between The Nativity and The Passion

 The Midpoint

Today is the midpoint, the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end.  Which is to say, today is the Feast of the Presentation, a perfect microcosm of both/and.  The official Christmas Season ended a couple weeks ago on the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord. The Presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple forty days after his birth as prescribed in Jewish law, however, is the concluding celebratory event of the scriptural nativity narrative. My wife’s forebears in Poland always extended their Christmas celebration until the Feast of the Presentation on February 2nd. This is still the practice in some places (including the Vatican).

     At the same time, Lent is bearing down on us.  The connection is clear in the traditional liturgical calendar, where Pre-Lent starts on Septuagesima Sunday, three-and-one-half weeks before Ash Wednesday.  The Church just observed Septuagesima Sunday this past weekend, which you would have seen if you attended the TLM. While Pre-Lent is not formally part of the Ordinary Calendar anymore, it’s still there in the readings. You might have noticed that the response to the Psalm at the Ordinary Form mass this past Sunday was the Lenten verse: “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts”. So, this year post-Christmas and Pre-Lent actually overlap by several days.

Simeon: Both/And

     The both/and, Christmas/Lent aspect of the Presentation is personified in Simeon. He is the prophetic old man who has God’s promise that he will see the Messiah before he dies. Simeon takes baby Jesus in his arms and first intones a prayer of thanks and praise. We call this prayer the Nunc Dimittis from its open words in Latin. In English it begins: “Now, Lord, you let your servant go in peace . . .” (Luke 2:29-32).

Simeon the Righteous, by Alexey Yegorov, 1830s-1840s

     That, however, is not the end of it.  He next turns to Mary and says:

Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel,
and for a sign that is spoken against
(and a sword will pierce through your own soul also),
that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed. (Luke 2:34-35)

Small wonder that the Presentation/Prophecy of Simeon provides both one of the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary and one of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.  You can see the whole scene wonderfully played out in Caravaggio’s characteristically dramatic painting of the Presentation. The painting appears below. I also use it as the backdrop to my video of Holst’s magnificent choral setting to the Nunc Dimittis.  

Caravaggio’s Painting

When we look at the painting the brightest figure in picture immediately catches our eye. That’s baby Jesus, in the middle of the left half of the composition.  We then take in the shadowy image of Simeon holding the child, along with the prophetess Anna. She has also been awaiting the Messiah in the Temple. Our gaze then moves right, where we notice a befuddled looking Joseph at the margin. Our eye finally comes to rest on Mary, the blood-red of her tunic the deepest color in the picture.  At last, we settle on her hands, which clutch the heart that Simeon has just told her will be pierced by a sword.

The Presentation in the Temple, Caravaggio

Joy and Sorrow

     The Presentation is not the only place where we see this unexpected (to us) combination of joy and sorrow.  Let’s look back a little earlier in Luke’s Gospel, where Mary sings the canticle we know as The Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55). This song is her greeting to her cousin Elizabeth (who is herself pregnant with John the Baptist).  The Magnificat is closely modeled on an Old Testament canticle sung by Hannah, the mother of Samuel (1 Samuel 2:1-10). Given the close resemblance of the two songs, we are clearly expected to see Hannah as a type, or prefigurement, of Mary.

Hannah’s is not simply a ritual presentation of her son to The Lord, by the way. She brings little two-year-old Samuel to the temple and leaves him there, to be raised by Eli the priest.  This was the child for whom she wept and prayed, but she only received him after she promised to give him back to God, which she does, literally.

God’s Ways

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, by Hans Holbein the Elder, c. 1500

     There is something here that is true to motherhood in general. Mothers receive their children only to give them up in the end. The joy comes at the price of the sorrow.  There is something deeper going on as well, something about the nature of Christian discipleship. But before we get to that, I’d like to take another look at the liturgical calendar.  

It’s interesting that the liturgical year doesn’t unfold in the order we might expect.   We have the beginning and the end, Christmas and Easter with all their drama, in the first half of the year. Then, in the last six months we have what seems like it should be the middle. It feels, however, like one long denouement until it all starts up again on the first Sunday of advent.

This is not how you or I would have planned it, but God’s ways are not our ways, and his thoughts are not out thoughts (see Isaiah 55:8). We could point out that the dates of Easter and Christmas were established independently, at different times and for different reasons. The date of Easter isn’t arbitrary. It follows the dates of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. These happened at the time of the Jewish Passover. Passover is a movable feast, but always happens around the same time in Spring.   Easter, consequently, is likewise a movable feast, falling somewhere between March 22nd and April 25th. The Church has celebrated the Resurrection since its very beginning.

The Way of the Cross

The celebration of Christmas, on the other hand, didn’t become common until several centuries later. In this case Holy Scripture gives no certain date. Christians in the west seem to have settled on the date of December 25th some time in the 4th century.  

     There is no clear record of how the Church made the final determination for the date of Christmas. There was, as it happens, an earlier consensus on the date of the Annunciation. Logically Christmas should follow nine months later, shouldn’t it?  That agreed upon date for the Annunciation, by the way, was the one we still observe: March 25th.  

There was a widespread belief in the early church by the way, that whatever the liturgical date of the Easter celebration, the actual date of the Resurrection was also March 25th . . . so maybe the dates are not so independent after all. Whatever factors went into it and however the liturgical calendar took on its current form, it seems that that close proximity of Christmas and Lent gives us little time to forget that our savior came into this world for the explicit purpose of following the Way of the Cross.

Pick Up the Cross

Christ Crucified, by Diego Velazquez, c. 1632

     We might want to consider that the baby Jesus we see in the Presentation grows up to tell his disciples: “If any man would come  after me, let him pick up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).  We have heard of the crucifixion so often that it can become an abstraction. We’ve seen it so many times in tidy, pious pictures, that perhaps we can’t understand how viscerally shocking that image was to the disciples.  They were personally familiar with this hideous form of execution. They had seen men undergo the wrenching, tortuous death inflicted by the hideous instrument, the cross, crux in Latin, that gives us our word excruciating. One does not lightly or casually pick up one’s cross.

A Double Edged Sword     

There really is a lot going on in this one feast day. We see the two-edged prophecy of Simeon, linking Salvation and Sorrow. Likewise, we see the placement of the feast day as the midpoint, the intersection of Christmas joy and the penitential season of Lent. Finally, we find ourselves wondering at the  departure from chronological order that puts those two seasons right next to each other, when we would expect to find them at opposite ends of the year. All those things come together in the Presentation to remind us that Christ is our Savior, but he has not come to save us from sorrow or suffering in this world. No, he’s come to save us from sin. Hhe doesn’t save us from the cross, he saves us through the cross.

Featured image top of page: Scene with Christ in the Temple, by Fra Bartolomeo, 1519

Music for the Presentation of Our Lord: Holst’s “Nunc Dimittis”