The last time it happened was 2018; Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday (marking the start of Lent) falling on the same day.
The next time will be 2029, and then the wait will be more than 100 years until it happens again in 2170!
“For some people, it could be a little confusing, said a priest the last time this happened: “Do I fast, or do I eat my chocolate?”
What do we do with a day that has two important things in it. A friend sent me a helpful Roman Catholic blog when I posted on Facebook I was sitting in the church in Allhallowgate in the quietness on Monday night seeking inspiration. I’d put in my diary for Monday night “write sermon for Wednesday.”
Father Thomas Conway writes “I find it thought provoking that Ash Wednesday and Valentines Day fall on the same day this year. The differences in the two commemorations are just this side of comical.
Valentines Day conjures up two people scrubbed clean for an important evening out. On Ash Wednesday most Catholics see it as a sacred duty to find a church so that some duly designated person can purposely smear black ashes on the most prominent place on the body. And of course, it’s not a random mark but the sign of the cross symbolising the death of Jesus. Valentines Day often comes accompanied by robust demands for creativity, some obligations of gift giving and an aura of extravagance. One rose is not enough and a dozen roses is also not enough. Keep going. Everything about Ash Wednesday roars of sacrifice, desolation, austerity, simplicity, retrenchment. Don’t you even dare think about a delicious steak dinner! A proper Valentines Day it seems, should send off fireworks of self esteem: messages of “I feel great about me, I feel great about you. I feel great about us together.”
Next to Good Friday, Ash Wednesday is the Catholic person’s highest holiday of cataloging, indexing and cross referencing every one of our most grievous and most minor transgressions against God and humanity.”
So can we do both things? What do we write in a Valentine card? “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return”?!
Well let’s think about the word Valentine. There is a four-letter word in it. That word is Lent. So maybe you can’t have Valentines without Lent in it. Bare with me!
Two things strike me.
When we are ashed if that is our tradition and we find it helpful and I know a lot of Methodist people don’t do this day, it is a public sign that indeed we were dust and to dust we shall return. God created us from the ground and one day when we end this life on earth, we shall return to it. We are reminded on Ash Wednesday that life on earth is short. We have one go at it. Maybe at the beginning of Lent we are reminded of our mortality. We recall God's words to Adam in Genesis 3:19, “for dust you are, and to dust you will return.” These brutally realistic words from three thousand years ago stand in stark contrast to the archetypal lie that Satan told Eve, and the denial that flourishes today: "surely you will not die!"
Ash Wednesday is thus "the most honest of days," says Sara Miles in her book City of God, because it's a day when the church reminds us of what our culture denies, and what no one else will tell us—that our days are limited, and that we've made a mess of things. The hard truth of Lent is thus a blessing because it deconstructs our lies and tells us the truth. Lent helps us to live in reality.
So maybe the challenge today is to live every day well. Because we haven’t long here. Time rushes on. On a pastoral visit on Monday a man said “how long you been here now. Two years?” He was shocked when I said it will be four in the summer.
In her book Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and Other Lessons from the Crematory,(what a great title) Caitlin Doughty aims to "look mortality straight in the eye," based upon her years working as a mortician.
In her view, "death should be known. Known as a difficult mental, physical, and emotional process, respected and feared for what it is."
She would disrupt our "polite complacency" about a taboo topic. "When you know that death is coming for you, the thought inspires you to be ambitious, to apologise to old enemies, call your grandparents, work less, travel more, learn Russian, take up knitting. Fall in love." Which is to say, we can live a better life if we think more intentionally about death. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. And the second bit —- “turn away from your sins and believe the good news.”
Maybe knowing we are here for a purpose we will be renewed to live life fully.
The Psalmist saw the need of a new beginning. We think Psalm 51 was prayed by David after Nathan the prophet had challenged him about being a very naughty boy with Uriah’s wife… “create in me a clean heart o God and put a new and right spirit within me.” Jesus wanted his people to be quietly loving. That’s why he condemns showy off religion all about wanting to make us feel good and noticed. The popular belief about St Valentine is that he was a priest from Rome in the third century AD. Emperor Claudius II had banned marriage because he thought married men were bad soldiers. Valentine felt this was unfair, so he broke the rules and arranged marriages in secret.
When Claudius found out, Valentine was thrown in jail and sentenced to death. There, he fell in love with the jailer’s daughter and when he was taken to be killed on 14 February, he sent her a love letter signed “from your Valentine”.
Whether there is any truth in that story we do not know but maybe today we begin Lent celebrating sacrificial and unending love. As the old hymn says, “live this day as if thy last.”
Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.
We celebrate love today of all sorts and most of all the eternal love of God which is overwhelming and more lasting and healthier than even the largest most expensive box of chocolates. Lent reminds us yes of our mortality and the need to live well, but also of our destiny.
An old prayer book prayer for Lent said that where death began, life will be restored and that the Evil One who by a tree once overcame will likewise by a tree be overcome. The apple tree of the Garden of Eden will be superseded by a cross-shaped tree on a gruesome hill outside Jerusalem; there the possibility of life with God was born.
The sermon is morbid, but it also has in it the promise of resurrection.
Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day together are odd partners. But then ours is an odd faith, a faith that began in the dust and ashes of a borrowed tomb, a grave, a place of death. That womb of dust and ash and death was the resting place of Christ who loved the world all the way to death on a cross.
“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” These are the words that will be spoken over us in our service today. The clock is ticking. But the mark of the cross remindsus that there is so much more. Ashes are not forever. Endings always have new beginningsafter them.
You can’t have Valentines without Lent in it. Write that in a card next time the two things happen on the same day in five years time.
Now, even now, in the midst of dust and ashes on this day of love, it is a day of deep grace a day when we remember we are in the hands of God in life, in death and into the glory of eternity.
Jesus, you place on my forehead
the sign of my sister Death:
"Remember you are dust,
and to dust you shall return."
How not hear her wise advice?
One day my life on earth will end;
the limits on my years are set,
though I know not the day or hour.
Shall I be ready to go to meet you?
Let this holy season be a time of grace
for me and all this world.
"Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain wisdom of heart."
O Jesus, you place on my forehead
the sign of your saving Cross:
"Turn from sin and be faithful
to the gospel."
How can I turn from sin
unless I turn to you?
You speak, you raise your hand,
you touch my mind and call my name,
"Turn to the Lord your God again."
These days of your favour
leave a blessing as you pass
on me and all your people.
Turn to us, Lord God,
and we shall turn to you.
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