Romantic Cards and Flowers, Fancy Dinners and Parties, and Lots and Lots of Chocolate, how do we Fit Prayer, Fasting and Alms Giving ?
Editorial (14/02/2024 Gaudiumpress) Love at its best, is sacrifice. Red roses cost the most on Feb 14. So does a Valentine’s Day dinner. Throw in some jewellery and the sacrifice can make you feel the pinch. But that’s exactly how you show you care. Twelve is a complete number and 12 red long stem roses say your love is complete: like 12 months in a year, or 12 hours in a day, or the 12 tribes of Israel or the 12 apostles who followed Christ. Twelve is, after all, complete number and a real display of love.
Love or Greater Love?
Contrary to some hyper-commertialized perceptions, Valentine himself was more than a chubby little Cupid with a bow and arrow. He was a 3rd Century priest who went against the Roman Emperor Claudius and secretly married couples. The emperor prohibited marriage as he considered that an unmarried man would be a better soldier. And so, Valentine was finally martyred for being a Christian who did not renounce his faith. Miracles while he was alive and after his death made him reach his fame as the saint of love who was martyred on Feb 14th. He helped shine a new light on the sacrament of matrimony: a level of divine love in the greatest Love of all – Christ Jesus who gave His All.
Without sacrifice there can be no gift
Ash Wednesday, in turn, heralds the awakening of the dawn of 40 days through the desert. Images of aridity, hunger, thirst and poverty of soul will combine through golden sands into rock solid faith, resilient hope and sacrificial love. But first, journeying away from Pharaoh’s onions, garlic and melons, and abandoning oneself to the providence of what the Word can say and make, of one who can listen and stay awake; and take note of what has been said, what is being said, what was and what can be. Forty days in the desert message us hard, so we can also understand that we are dust and to dust we shall return, to repent and turn to the gospel, to good news.
Or again, in another sharp contrast, 40 days and 40 nights of rain with Noah in the Ark, through the deluge, brought mankind to a complete new beginning. It would not have happened if Noah did not believe, for without faith there can be no hope. But with Faith and Hope, there can surely come Love.
Finding love is also a new beginning. A true beginning. But it will be through the desert and with sacrifice. Towards Calvary. To the Cross. And only then to the Brightness of Light. This Light can blind us. Yet, this Light is so bright, that our eyes would have to be in the dark to begin to behold it. But first, lets awake the dawn…
“Remain in the dark in pure faith…”
The great Spanish Mystic, Saint John of the Cross – if some of his words can be grasped – says it so sublimely: ‘Remain in the dark in pure faith’. Clearly, he means nothing else than going forth from one’s own human dealings and operations to the operations and dealings of God. The soul must feel reduced to a state of emptiness, poverty and abandonment, left dry and empty and in darkness. For earthly senses are purified in aridity, the faculties of the soul are purified in the emptiness of one’s perceptions and the spirit is purified in the thick darkness.
For until the Lord shall have completely purged us in the manner that He wills, until our spirit is humbled, softened and purified, and grows so keen and delicate and pure that we can become one with the Spirit of God, according to the degree of union of love which His mercy is pleased to grant us.
Until then, must we resolve to take this pilgrimage of 40 days at least, and some …
And that’s why Easter follows Lent. As the real St. Valentine should follow the deepest meaning of Ash Wednesday. Without contradictions or camouflages.
by Christopher Hurst
