From a Word from Becky, my monthly newsletter to my readers
Dear friends,
Tomorrow in the United States we celebrate Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is often very close to Lent. This year a week separates it from Ash Wednesday. It is interesting to hold Valentine’s Day and the Lenten season next to each other. Both, in their own way, celebrate love.
Valentine’s Day offers a moment to acknowledge those we love and care about. We are invited to express our love to the special people in our lives. Often through a concrete item of a card or written words. Perhaps, some give flowers or chocolates. Simple signs that show outwardly the love we feel for another. It is a day, in its purest form, to say to our loved ones, “Don’t forget I am here for you. I love you!” While this day in America has gotten a little out of hand in my opinion, it invites us to do as St. Ignatius suggests we do at the end of the Spiritual Exercises “to put our love into deeds”.
The season of Lent offers us another expression of love. It is a season that expresses love not through hearts and flowers, but through the witness of sacrifice, of giving up on behalf of another, and of companionship in a person’s suffering. In the third week of the Spiritual Exercises, we are invited to accompany Jesus in his suffering. When I walk people through the Exercises, I encourage them to allow themselves to be drawn as close as possible to Jesus’ suffering. Our invitation is to feel compassion for Jesus and to seek to comfort him in his suffering. As we walk with Jesus through his passion and death, we come to understand the great act of love Jesus offered us.
Valentine’s Day and Lent both offer us opportunities to reflect on love. We can find both expressions of these types of love in a key Gospel during the Lenten season, the Last Supper.
After washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus reminds them of the new commandment:
“I give you a new commandment:* love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13: 34-35)
Jesus reminds his disciples that we are called to love each other as Jesus loves us. That means the expressions of love that we do offer on Valentine’s Day. The sharing of a meal, the spending time together, the offering of simple gifts. All things Jesus did with and for his disciples.
He encourages his disciples at the Last Supper, “as I have done for you, you should also do” (John 13: 15). These words urge us to love as Jesus loved during his passion and death. He reminds us here that love is not only about the hearts and flowers, but it is a commitment to draw near to another person’s suffering, to remind people they are not alone, and to be willing to walk with people no matter what they are facing and going through.
Lent takes our Valentine’s expression of love and pulls our love into the deep. We are drawn to the places to love where we reach the end of our human capacity. To those places, where we realize the only way to love this person and to walk with them in their suffering is with the help of the Trinity. That is how Jesus loved us to the end, with the help of God. This spot of acknowledging our help to love those in our lives is holy, sacred ground. It is a place where God’s grace showers upon us because we realize we are not actually loving another alone.
As we prepare for the upcoming Lenten season, let’s reflect on how this season can widen our capacity to love another. Our upcoming retreat is focused on this very theme of loving as Jesus loved. It is called As I Have Done for You. You will walk with Jesus through every step of the last moments of his life. You will be invited to love him anew, to comfort him in his suffering, and to learn how to love those in your life as he loved. I hope you will join us.
Know that my prayers for you today are about God opening our capacity to both give and receive love!
Peace,
Becky
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash
Becky Eldredge
February 13, 2023