Monthly Archives: February 2024

Valentines and Ashes

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Fr. James DiLuzio’s Meditation for Lent

Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day coalesce on the calendar this year. With our Catholic sensibilities, and in the spirit of penance and renewal both of which ground us in love, this confluence of a holy day and one with popular, secular appeal must give us pause.

Shakespeare, for example, mingled concepts of both love and death in Sonnet 116: 

“Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

In the 19th century, Lord Byron authored a poem about grieving an unrequited love in the context of his mortality:

“And when convulsive throes denied my breath, The faintest utterance to my fading thought, To thee—to thee—e’en in the gasp of death My spirit turned, oh! oftener than it ought.”

More importantly, recall the biblical book of poetry entitled The Song of Songs:

“Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm; For Love is strong as Death, longing is fierce as Sheol. Its arrows are arrows of fire, flames of the divine.”

Does not Cupid’s arrows pierce us to a kind of death? Dying to self, we are reborn with love for another for whom we are willing to sacrifice all. Of course, romantic love can fill us with self-absorption, but it is the Saint Valentine-inspired love that we are exploring here. As we eschew the romantic notions of the secular holiday, we find its religious source of inherent value. Valentine is the story of the martyrdom of not one, not two, but more than likely three persons named Valentine–each death in a different decade of the Roman Empire’s Christian persecution.[1] These men chose to die for Love of Christ and the Church, to accept death so that others might live. This is an imitation of Christ, who willingly confronted the falsehood of society and culture, its lies, and fears—both religious and secular—trusting that his death would lead him to his glorified exaltation on the Cross. Indeed, the CROSS revealed that sacrifice for Love of God, for what is True, liberates people to heavenly realities even as we live and love and die in this world. Ash Wednesday’s urging that we humbly forbear in charitable giving, fasting, and prayer is, in fact, a kind of death, a “little martyrdom” an invitation to daily sacrifices that prove Ash Wednesday / Valentine’s Day’s juxtaposition is not incongruent at all.

Let’s look at a corollary of our faith found in Music and Art. Richard Wagner’s operas Der fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde, and especially the last scene of his epic Ring of the Nibelungen entitled Gotterdammerung, dramatize a philosophy that we can only experience the fullness of love in an apotheosis—a glorification of love’s essence when it culminates in and through death. This insight implies Love’s perfection is heaven’s achievement, that God accomplishes its fulfillment in Christ’s resurrection from the dead offered to all. God’s extraordinary love in Christ offers us, because of Jesus’ humanity the assurance that the Holy Spirit weaves all human love with its heavenly potential and will bring us into eternal life. Thus, every loving experience we have on earth, be it for a beloved person, or through the daily sacrifices we make to build up the kingdom of God, is meant to culminate in heaven. This is Christianity’s promise: every moment of Grace is everlasting. By God’s design, Grace incarnates love in us to bring us to our ultimate communion with the Saints and with God whose Love is all in all.

The Church marks us with Ashes in the Sign of the Cross, revealing to the world that Christianity does not fear death, nor does it fear confessing our sins, admitting our wrongs. The Paschal Mystery empowers us to let death’s reality humble us and renew our consciousness that all are dependent upon God and God’s mercy, deepening our love of God and neighbor. When we die to sin, we rise to LOVE, tenderness, kindness, patience, and charity–the kind of life experiences that confirm God’s presence in the world, strengthening our belief that everyone belongs, and everything is interconnected. Yes, heavenly realities permeate the earth, justifying the belief in eternal life!

Our Catholic Faith engages us in a “re-creation,” compelling us to die to the devil’s deceptions, and self-serving celebrity, and rise to a better occasion in pursuit and cultivation of a “new heaven, and a new earth?” (Rev. 21:1) Not for nothing does that phrase from the Book of Revelation become explicit in Jesus who invites us to love with a generosity of spirit, engaging us in acts of self-sacrifice that will bring us to an ultimate existence of mutual beneficence. In his humanity, Christ allowed himself to be dependent upon God completely, emptying himself to love and love alone. So, too, must we acknowledge our dependence upon God, and because our lives are not our own, love becomes our only choice. Valentines and Ashes make it clear just how indispensable it is that humanity dies to the illusions of our self-importance as individuals, as family, and as a nation, by dying and rising with the Saints who incarnate, in imitation of Christ, the words in John’s Gospel 12: 24

“Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.”  What wondrous love is this?

[1]From Valentine’s Day – Wikiwand: “Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine.[17] The Valentines honored on February 14 are Valentine of Rome (Valentinus presb. m. Romae) and Valentine of Terni (Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae).[18] Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who was martyred in 269 and was added to the calendar of saints by Pope Gelasius I in 496 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. The relics of St. Valentine were kept in the Church and Catacombs of San Valentino in Rome, which “remained an important pilgrim site throughout the Middle Ages until the relics of St. Valentine were transferred to the church of Santa Prassede during the pontificate of Nicholas IV [1288 – 1292]”.[19][20] The flower-crowned skull of Saint Valentine is exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, Rome. Other relics are found at Whitefriars in Dublin, Ireland.[21]

Valentine of Terni became bishop of Interamna (now Terni, in central Italy) and is said to have been martyred during the persecution under Emperor Aurelian in 273. He is buried on the Via Flaminia, but in a different location from Valentine of Rome. His relics are at the Basilica of Saint Valentine in Terni (Basilica di San Valentino). Professor Jack B. Oruch of the University of Kansas notes that “abstracts of the acts of the two saints were in nearly every church and monastery of Europe.”[22] A relic claimed to be Saint Valentine of Terni’s head was preserved in the abbey of New Minster, Winchester, and venerated.[23]

The Catholic Encyclopedia speaks of a third saint named Valentine who was mentioned in early martyrologies under date of February 14. He was martyred in Africa with a number of companions, but nothing more is known about him.[24] “

NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS 

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A Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time 2024 by Fr. James DiLuzio  

Kate Chopin, a Catholic and early feminist writer of the late 1800’s, authored a short story entitled BEYOND THE BAYOU. La Folle, an African American Creole, is thirty-five years old. She lives alone, self-sufficient working her plot of land, but never crossing the bayou to engage with the world beyond her cabin. Yet she knows, that beyond a stretch of woods, the waterway that she sees is shallow, sometimes nothing more than wet sand. One could walk across it easily. Never mind! She was content, and pleased to welcome people who occasionally came to her home.  

Twenty years before our story takes place, the son of the plantation owner for whom she worked, was wounded in a gun accident in the woods. He ran to her cabin for relief. She nursed the boy into recovery.  

Now fully grown, this boy became the plantation owner himself, and, with life-long gratitude, visits La Folle  often with his wife and children. She becomes exceptionally fond of his ten-year-old son whom she calls “Cherie.” Like his father before him, Cherie goes hunting with his rifle. And he, unlike his father, brings La Folle various game, and, in return, she bakes him cakes which they eat together.  

One day, she hears his cries in the woods. Running to him from her cabin, she finds him gravely injured. His is a wound she cannot heal.  

She picks up the ten-year-old and runs frantically across the bayou for the first time in her life toward Cherie’s family home on the opposite shore. Responding to her screams, the family takes the child from her just as La Folle collapses from exhaustion. The incident leaves her near-death, but in time she recovers.  

Soon afterward, she walks across the bayou, now more casually taking in the scene, appreciating the breeze, the sounds of life all around her. She crosses to  

see Cherie, who is improving, but remains in a state of recovery. When she arrives, his parents tell her he is  

sleeping, but she chooses to wait. It is a Sunday morning, and our story concludes as La Folle sits on the front porch of the family’s house, gazing at the sunrise that hovers up and over the bayou, beyond the trees, above her cabin, smiling as she responds to the golden glow.  

Lovely story, isn’t it? Sometimes it takes a harrowing event, but change will come. Change is inevitable sometimes because of, sometimes despite us. Through necessity or by sheer will, we must claim a new set of priorities for ourselves and others. Jesus tells us repeatedly, “Your vision has to change.”  

The person with leprosy in today’s gospel was ready for change. He saw Jesus in ways that other people did not. And Jesus saw the sick fellow as others did not. One might say this alternate vision, distinct from the commonplace, brought about the person’s healing. Indeed, a different point of view can make a world of difference. 

We have heard today’s Gospel dozens of times, haven’t we? And yet disciples remain startled that Jesus says to the man after he heals him, “Tell no one.”  Why? Why would Jesus say that? The patient is healed. Reborn. Shout it out! Scream “Hallelujah!” No. Instead, Jesus says, “tell no one, “Because he is trying to convey our need to “To Wait.” “Tarry a little.” “To Ponder it.”  

Remember all the nameless people in the Gospels are meant to convey EVERYONE. So, Jesus is saying to the man and to us: 

“Think! This healing is not about You—even though it has begun with you. This healing is not about me—even though it comes through me. Your recovery is an experience of GOD. Everything is about GOD! It is a miracle, but miracles are not ends in themselves; they are beginnings. They are overtures to faith, hope, and love that originates in God.  

So, when we hear a story of a Miracle, know that Jesus is inviting us to look at the world in new way. Miracles are meant to inspire us to new ways of living. Ponder that! 

And while we are pondering this, the Gospel says Jesus tells the man: “Go show yourself to the priest.” In other words, “follow traditions, follow the religious laws and requirements of our faith, but know that even our practices, our rituals are not ends in themselves but God-decreed conduits for change, for something beyond the ordinary. They are vehicles of transportation to a heavenly realm – so that as Jesus lifts us up into a communion with the Saints, heaven comes down to earth, and we see God WITH US in all things.”  

Because God is with us in Christmas and ORDINARY TIME, in miracles and in the mundane, we can see better, live better, choose better. Through sacraments and prayer and lives lived well, Jesus beckons us beyond the world of might makes right, of intimidation, judgments, and cruelty to transform it into the Kingdom of God.  

Franciscan Friar and author Richard Rohr reminds us that the world operates at the lowest degrees of human nature. Societies often employ “the lowest level of motivations to get things going, particularly “rewards-and-punishments.” Jesus knew that this framework can only take us so far. True self-esteem and motivation must come from somewhere else. From someone else. Self-worth comes from God, and knowing each of us are part of God’s grandeur, and a plan for a better world NOW and in the Future, beckoning at every sunrise, at every horizon. 

For only Christ’s love is true love. Only faith in Christ will motivate us to see the true goods there are in this world, and– yes, although there is a lot to discourage us, there is true good here. But we need to tend it, to help it grow. And what is not good, we need to change, and we can, and we will by the grace of God. 

Making a better NOW is the Gospel. The Good News. Dying and Rising is The Kingdom of God. Although we may be afraid of it, it is Jesus’ power of true life. The only fulfilling life. The gifts of the HOLY SPIRIT are in us to reclaim, to activate today, tomorrow, and the next day.  

It is time we see this world of ours as challenging but redeemable. We must LET LOVE HAPPEN. Lent is on the horizon. It is time for a CHANGE. We need to pick up our lifeless world and run with it. Go for the goal beyond the Superbowl. Allow the kingdom of God to take precedent NOW for a better future tomorrow. As you come to the Eucharistic table today, take and eat the Vision that is for you, for me, for everyone: the Kingdom of God is at hand.