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Aside from being Valentine’s Day this Saturday, a day of celebrating romantic love, it is also the pre-Lenten ‘ Meatfare Saturday’ in the Orthodox churches (called thus, because we’re saying ‘farewell’ to meat this weekend), on which we commemorate all the deceased. Actually, every Saturday from ancient Christian times was dedicated to remembering the deceased and ‘ all saints,’ before other commemorations and feasts gradually entered the church calendar, often obscuring the ancient meaning of Saturday. Historical note: The Lenten season returns us to many of our most ancient traditions, because the liturgical ‘high’ seasons, like Lent and Pascha-to-Pentecost, remain less changed by later developments in the church-calendar than the rest of the church-year.
Let’s reflect a bit on the ancient meaning of Saturday, the Sabbath, and see how we can integrate it into this Valentine’s Day. The Hebrew word for Saturday, ‘shabat’ (שָׁבַת֙), often translated as “ He rested,” literally means, “ He ceased” or “ He desisted,” recalling the words of Genesis 2:3 that God desisted on this Seventh Day of the week, from the specific work He had done throughout the Six Days of creation. This was notan invitation to human beings to become Deists, believing falsely that God ceased to intervene in our lives or to work with us, throughout our lives. This was rather a sign that God was henceforth entrusting us, the God-like creatures He had made on the Sixth Day, with bringing forward His creative work, by “ increasing and multiplying” all that He had given us. Our creative abilities were always to be inspired and enlivened by our Source of Life, God, in harmony and communion with His faithful, hopeful and loving will for us and the world. What makes us ‘tick’ properly, in sync with God’s will, and what drives us to move forward to ‘increase and multiply’ properly (whether or not we have children), is the faith, hope, and love for God and one another, all three of which (faith, hope and love) His Spirit breathes into our hearts, in communion with Him.
Both the Saturday of the Deceased and Valentine’s Day are an occasion to celebrate our God-given ‘drives’ that move us forward and help us grow, to ‘ increase and multiply,’ rather than be diminished: faith, hope and love. Whether we grievetoday our beloved deceased, or our beloved from whom we might otherwise be separated; or we celebrate the beloved we have right next to us, we might remembertoday with gratitude that it is God who gives us both the capacity to grieve, to yearn, and to desire ‘more,’ not to put us down and diminish us, but so that we grow toward the ‘more’ that He has in store for us. Here on earth, we are only given glimpses of the ultimate unity or union we all desire. At times, we might channel this desire into only one person, our beloved, and if the feeling is mutual, this is a great gift. It’s also a great gift if the feeling is not mutual, if we ‘let go and let God,’ because this helps us learn more about who we are and to re-direct ourselves accordingly. In any event, sooner or later, for various reasons our ‘one person’ will not be sufficient to fill that God-shaped hole in our hearts, which ‘groans,’ as St. Paul writes, for more: “ For in this(our ‘earthly house’) we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven...” (2 Cor 5:1-2). On this Saturday, let us be grateful for our loves and losses, channeling towards God and recharging in Him our faith, hope and love in His undying presence among us.❤
