A Valentine of Ashes

I'm sure that it has happened before, but this is the first time I can recall where Ash Wednesday fell on Valentine's Day.

Traditionally a day to celebrate romantic love, we often express this with cards, candy, and special dinners.  But today is a day of fast, abstinences, and ashes.

But rather than being a downer, I think that this is a wonderful confluence ideas.  That isn't to say that romantic love is all dower and serious, although it can be.  Ash Wednesday is a day where we remember to die to ourselves.  We put away the person we were before and we take up the cross to follow Christ where He leads.

One of my favorite parts of the wedding ceremony is the unity candle.  It is a large candle with two smaller candles on the side. This is a symbol of death.  When I got married, I invited all of my students to my wedding.  I pitched it as: "Come and watch me die."  And I was completely serious about this point.  Marriage is a kind of death.

In the unity candle, the smaller candles are lit with the large one in the center unlit.  After the vows are exchanged, the bride and groom take these smaller candles in hand.  The smaller candles represent their individual lives.  Together, they light the large candle.  This represents their new life together.  But then they each blow out their individual candles.  This represents the death of their old lives.

At a wedding, the bride looks at the groom and says, "I love you so much that I give my life for you." And she dies.

The groom looks at the bride and says, "I love you so much that I give my life to you."  And he dies.

And then Christ resurrects them into a new life, where the two are now one flesh.

But you cannot rise to this new life unless you die to your old one.  As a married man, I no longer live for myself.  I live for my wife.  My wants, hopes, dreams, plans, and desires no longer matter.  She must be first in my life after the Lord (and my children if we have any).  This is not one-sided.  My wife is an amazing woman and I know that one of the first things she thinks about when she wakes up is "How can I make my husband's life better today?"  

Marriage works if we follow the example of Christ: if we die to ourselves and live for each other.  

That is why today seems like a very appropriate day to reflect on romantic love.  Hopefully the love we have for each other looks less a store-bought Valentine's heart but more like our Lord's Sacred Heart.

The Sacred Heart of Jesus is a heart that burns with passionate love despite the wounds it receives.  In our relationships, we cannot help but come across hurts and slights.  Most couples have been known to have the occasional fight, even big fights.  But if we model our romantic love after that Sacred Heart, we will never light the fire of that passion dim.  

Does this seem impossible?

For human beings it is.

But nothing is impossible for God.

So today, as we celebrate romantic love on this Ash Wednesday, let the fire of our love rise again from these ashes.