Harden Not Your Heart: Love Advice from the Ash Wednesday Readings

’Tis the season for romantic one liners like, “Be mine,” “Sweets for a sweetheart,” and the always dreaded “Get real.” This year, however, Anthony Berret, S.J., professor emeritus of English at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia — and a Jesuit for over 50 years — suggests we base our love notes on the Bible.

2018 features a unique calendar alignment, with Valentine’s Day coinciding with Ash Wednesday on Wednesday, Feb. 14 for the first time since 1945. Ash Wednesday is the day of atonement that marks the beginning of Lent for Christians. “What lessons,” asks Fr. Berret, “can we take from the Lenten season into our hearts?”

According to Fr. Berret, the word “heart” appears in three readings of the Ash Wednesday Mass:

1. “Rend your heart, not your garments” (Joel 2.13). “During Lent, we try to revive our inner feelings of love, faith and mercy, not just demonstrate them by outward shows,” says Fr. Berret. In considering the Catholic ritual of ashes, he offers metaphorically, “Put them on your heart, not your forehead.” Though external signs, like ashes, can symbolize inner feelings, Berret worries they can also substitute for them — penances can replace penitence. He says that our Lord stresses the interior motives of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, not just these external displays.
2. “Create in me a clean heart” (Psalm 51.10). According to Fr. Berret, this verse focuses on interior motive or attitude. “Virtue and goodness need to be purified of such ulterior motives as gain or popularity,” he adds.
3. “If today you hear his voice, harden not your heart” (Psalm 95.8). “Hearts can and must be open to the views and appeals of other persons, not closed within themselves, no matter how ‘interior’ they are,” says Fr. Berret.

Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, is celebrated the day before Ash Wednesday, an opportunity to indulge before 40 days of fasting. In considering the link between these two feast days — which celebrate balance — Fr. Berret, who specializes in music and American literature, offers the common jazz standard, “My Funny Valentine.” Written for the 1937 Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical “Babes in Arms,” the tune is a part of “The Great American Songbook” and has been recorded by over 600 artists, including Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald.

“‘My Funny Valentine’ mixes romance with abnegation,” says Fr. Berret, “like the balance between Mardi Gras’ excess and Ash Wednesday’s fasting.

“The lyrics portray a love that goes deeper than looks or the conventional standards of beauty,” he continues. “The song resembles Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, which begins, ‘My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun,’ but ends with, ‘And yet by heaven I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare’.”