I write this Easter article on St. Valentine’s Day. Weather-wise, it is a snowy, blustery winter day. It is not a warm spring day signalling new life, nor a sunny day suggesting love is in the air. Rather, it is a winter’s day—the sort of day that seems out of sync with both Easter and with lovers. It is the kind of day when you want to curl up with a good book and let it go by. But then the request for an article about Easter pulls you out of the deadness of winter to the new life of spring, just like a Valentine’s card and chocolate awaken you to the love of a loving partner.
Easter and St. Valentine’s Day belong together. The first speaks of God’s love. It is so deep, wide, and unconditional that God enters human existence and even the grave so that we are restored to life and love eternally. St. Valentine’s Day speaks to the bliss of two hearts joined as one. Both remind us that it really is love that makes the world, and even the universe, go around.
Both also hint at a winter’s day. Life on this planet is not all rosy or roses. There is bleakness and thorns. We get things right, and we get things wrong. We can hate as well as love. We follow Jesus and also deny him. Good Friday precedes Easter. There is Yin and Yang.
We need reminding of Easter and also of love. We need to be awakened from deadness to life, to spring even when in the dark days of winter, to love when the heart has hardened. Left to our own devices, we would be hopeless and fill the void with escapisms.
Easter and St. Valentine’s Day say to us that there is more to this earthly journey. It can seem like death is master and love is too fleeting. But with our soul and heart awakened, we come to see that God, the Source of everything, is Life! And death can have no permanent home in God. Equally, God is Love! And love is the essence of all that is and all that will be.
Easter and St. Valentine’s Day remind us that life and love are eternal, and that winter is but a season and it, like all death and every other negative emotion and thing, will pass. What remains is life and love, which is here and hereafter.
+John, Western Newfoundland
