It may have come to your attention that today is Ash Wednesday, and also Valentine’s Day. The internet thinks this is pretty funny. I’ve seen a lot of fun suggestions for combined Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day cards. I’ve also seen a secular low-fat recipe company try to be true to the spirit of both days by suggesting intimate and romantic lobster tacos to make for your abstaining date out of healthful lobster-flavored surimi fish protein. People are confused.
Of course, to me, Valentine’s Day has always been confusing in the first place. For one thing it’s also the feast of Saints Cyril and Methodias, so my husband usually hands me chocolate and a stuffed toy, tells me it’s a Cyril and Methodias present, and leaves me scratching my head until I remember what he’s talking about.
And then there’s that weird ambiguity that a cradle Catholic from an extremely repressed homeschooling Charismatic background always has about Valentine’s Day. We have to celebrate it, because it’s a feast day, but we mustn’t talk about the elephant in the room. We have to get together at Mrs. So-and-So’s house and decorate craft store wooden hearts with glitter. We have to eat store-bought heart cookies at a table with a pink and red disposable cloth. We have to talk about the beauty of love and how love is our goal as Christians. And if the slightly older children in the home school group try to give Valentines to members of the opposite sex professing love for them, they must be punished because we don’t do things like that.
On top of that, Ash Wednesday is pretty confusing itself. You’re supposed to fast, and you’re supposed to let the priest rub black ashes on your forehead at Mass and keep them there the rest of the day. But the Gospel reading at that very liturgy is Jesus enjoining you to wash your face and try not to look conspicuous when you fast. On top of that, some people always get very touchy and complain about persecution when non-Catholics remark negatively on their ashes– even though covering oneself with ash as penance is supposed to be an act of self-humiliation, so the ash detractors are actually doing what they’re intended to do and we ought to thank them for playing along. And then everybody announces to their friends what they’re giving up for Lent even though you’re never supposed to draw attention to your acts of penance in the first place, and round and round goes the wheel.
Today is a highly confusing day.
And confusion is good, because it forces you to think about what you are doing. And if you’re thinking about what you’re doing, you can change. That’s what Lent is all about.
If I find myself upset that Ash Wednesday has gotten in the way of the wild night of wining, dining and sex I was hoping to enjoy, perhaps I’d better think about the way I show affection for my beloved, and about less decadent ways I should be showing love. If I find myself snickering that other decadent people have their plans for gluttony and lust ruined, perhaps I’d better remind myself to attend to my own sins and mind my own business. If all I can think about is the discount Valentine’s candy I’m going to binge on when the fasting is relaxed on Sunday, or when Lent is finally over on Easter, maybe fasting from candy wasn’t the best penance for me– because it’s making me think even more about candy rather than Christ. If I’m constantly obsessing over my ashes and whether people are responding in the right way, I should ask myself if I’m worrying too much about aesthetics and turning the whole act into a form of role-play to be gotten right rather than worship to be engaged in as best as I can.
These are just a few of the things I should attend to, and I’m grateful for the confusion that calls them to mind.
And while I’m attending to these things, I should attend to Christ who is Love, and who is the point of all of this bother in the first place. I should make sure that my meditation today, throughout Lent and through my whole life is Christ, rather than lobster or chocolate or sex or keeping other people from thinking about sex, or how I look wearing ashes on my head, or how others respond. And in Christ, we keep orienting ourselves to Christ through our actions in the realms of eating and drinking, interacting with our neighbor, fasting or feasting, sex or abstaining from sex, but the focus must always be on Christ and not the things we do for Christ. How you do that is up to you; if you find it helpful, you can pray along with our Lenten meditations on the Seven Last Words and on the Way of the Cross which I’m re-sharing twice a week on the Steel Magnificat Facebook page.
There’s only one thing I’m going to be adamant about: those surimi lobster tacos look sinfully delicious.
(image via Pixabay)
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