Unless you’ve been married 73 years or more, Valentine’s Day will be a first today. The romantic holiday shares the day with Ash Wednesday – the start of the season of Lent, the 40-day period that leads to Easter.  It’s the first time the two have shared the same date since 1945. In another quirk this year, Easter also happens to share the date with April Fool’s Day. Go figure!

It’s quite an awkward pairing don’t you think? Valentine’s Day is all about romantic love, opulent dinners, decadent chocolates, beautiful flowers and mushy poetry. Ash Wednesday, on the other hand, insists on shameful repentance, remorseful prayer, pure simplicity, sacrificial fasting and the imposition of ashes.

The two actually have more in common than we might think. Valentine’s Day is all about love, but so is the beginning of Lent. Valentines Day’s is an opportunity to shower the one we love with gifts. Ash Wednesday is about remembering God’s sacrificial love for us. The only reason we are capable of showing any kind of love to one another is that Christ first showed love to us.

You see, our faith is nothing more than our longing for God, and His for us. But like any romance, it too has to be nurtured and nourished if it is to prosper and grow. And it’s what the faithful observance of Lent, with its prayer and fasting, helps us to do. Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day have a lot in common after all, for the goal of both is to renew our passion for the one we love.

So, have some ash with your chocolate today! Celebrate Valentine’s Day the way you always have. Do some crafts with your children. Buy flowers for your sweetheart. Send a box of chocolates to your mom. Then go to church and hear about a love that dwarfs any kind of love you’ve ever known. Receive the ashes and be reminded of how helpless you are without that love and how deeply you need it.

Here’s an idea: Show up at your favorite restaurant, get you name put on the wait list, come celebrate Ash Wednesday with us at Aldersgate, and by the time the service is over, your table will be ready!

Happy Valentines Ash Wednesday Day!