As she kissed me goodnight, my mother always traced a small sign of the cross on my forehead. She repeated this simple gesture on many other occasions, before my surgeries or my travels away from home. In every instance, I carried the weight of my mother’s love wherever I went.

On Ash Wednesday, Christians receive a similar cross. As the priest smudges the muddy ash on people’s foreheads, he recites the words God spoke to Adam and Eve before their banishment from paradise; “Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Especially on an occasion as festive as Valentine’s Day, I struggle to make sense of the gloom overshadowing Ash Wednesday. In the Hebrew scriptures, ashes symbolize grief, sorrow, and self-humiliation. Can a day devoted to love and intimacy be reconciled with the beginning of Lent?

“The purpose of Lent is not so much expiation, to satisfy the divine justice, as a preparation to rejoice in [God’s] love,” wrote the Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

While ashes remind us of our frailty and weakness, they also speak to our deepest longings. Human vulnerability arises, not when we sin, but more so when we love. Ash Wednesday acts as the prelude to a cosmic love affair. And like many great love stories, the romance of salvation begins with a kiss.

“Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” Genesis 2:7

Humanity first encounters God, not in wrath nor condemnation, but “mouth to mouth,” a kiss, an embrace. Adoratio, the Latin word for adoration and prayer, literally means “to the mouth of.”

What memory is more precious to many of us than our first kiss? From the beginning of creation, love animates our souls. We strive for intimate encounter as we strive for air; it gives us life.

Unfortunately, passionate love affairs often end in tragedy. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. Humanity fell, and God’s embrace, which once felt warm and inviting, now feels restrictive and limiting. Humanity fell when it forgot how to love.

Love requires sacrifice. Lent, with its emphasis on penance, fasting, and almsgiving, refocuses the Christian heart away from selfish desires toward building better relationships with God and others.

While we may forget God, God does not forget us. During Lent, God calls Christians to “return to me with your whole heart,” (Joel 2:12). St. Angela of Foligno, a lay Franciscan woman, provides a sensual and mystic insight to the endurance of God’s love.

“On Holy Saturday […] In a state of ecstasy, she found herself in the sepulcher with Christ. […] she placed her cheek on Christ’s own and he, in turn, placed his hand on her other cheek pressing her closely to him. At that moment, Christ’s faithful one heard him telling her: ‘Before I was laid in the sepulcher, I held you this tightly to me.’” – Angela of Foligno, Memoriale

Sometimes, we might take our relationships for granted; we forget the spark that ignited our bond. Lovers pine apart, friends change, and families divide. With love comes loss, and Christians feel the heartache of their separation from God most strongly during Lent.

But the Christian hope does not end in separation. Despite our collective heartache, ashes remind us that we are born into this world from and for love. Lent prepares us for a great wedding feast: the resurrected Christ united to his Church.

Ashes mark us with the weight of God’s love, pulling ever gently on our hearts so that we might respond, in the words of St. Augustine, “Late have I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you.”