This year, love and death go hand in hand on Valentine's Day

Eugene Diamond dipped strawberries in chocolate Tuesday morning at his family's candy store in a small town outside Kansas City. It was the day before Valentine's Day and all things chocolate were in high demand.

For Mr. Diamond, a practicing Catholic, another deadline was also looming: This year, Valentine's Day happens to fall on Ash Wednesday, usually devoted to penance and fasting. From that day on, Mr Diamond, his wife and eight children will no longer give sweets until Easter, which falls on March 31 this year.

Mr Diamond, 39, tested the sweets in the shop on Tuesday to prepare them. “I have to try these today because I won't have a chance to try them tomorrow,” he said.

Ash Wednesday is the first day of Lent, a time marked by sacrifice and solemnity. At church services across the country, clergy will smear crosses on the foreheads of parishioners and murmur, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.”

The day is intended as a reminder of human mortality, the beginning of a season that contrasts with and culminates in the joyful celebration of Easter. Practicing Catholics abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday, and the church also asks people ages 18 to 59 to eat only one full meal, plus two smaller ones “that together do not equal a full meal.”

That makes it an awkward match with Valentine's Day, a celebration of romantic love often marked with lavish food, wine and sweets.

For Catholics and others who observe the Christian liturgical calendar, this juxtaposition presents something of a dilemma. Across the country, clergy and their flocks are figuring out ways to have their molten chocolate cake and eat it too – just not all on the same day.

The two holidays fell on the same day in 2018, and will happen again in 2029. After that, Catholics, Episcopalians and others will be free of the strange overlap until the year 2170, some liturgical experts said. (Ash Wednesday is linked to Easter, a “movable festival” whose date is determined by the lunar calendar.)

“Valentine's Day has an air of festive indulgence, and Ash Wednesday has a much more solemn atmosphere,” says Gabrielle Girgis, 33, a practicing Catholic and postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who lives in South Bend, Indiana.

Ms. Girgis' older children attend a Catholic school that celebrates Valentine's Day in class a day early to avoid conflict. Her family goes to mass on Wednesday and eats a simple soup dinner. On Thursday, she and her husband will celebrate Valentine's Day at Jesús Latin Grill and Tequila Bar, a Latin American restaurant.

Online, Catholics and others had fun with the juxtaposition.

“Valentine, I would like to take you for a small meal that, when combined with another small meal, is no bigger than your big meal,” said a widely shared post on social media.

“You can't spell Valentine's Day without Lent,” others noted.

In Austin, the Rev. Noah Stansbury, an Episcopal priest who serves students at the University of Texas, ordered custom candy hearts that read “DUST 2 DUST,” “LIFE IS SHORT” and “UR SO LOVED.” He said he would hand them out Wednesday at an “ashes to go” station on campus, offering passersby a quick prayer and the customary cross of ashes on their foreheads.

“It's a way to change the narrative a little bit, to point out the core message that life is short and we know that,” Mr Stansbury said. “This is a reminder that if you want to change the way you live, God loves you enough to help you do it.”

He got the idea for the candy from his friend Jay Hulme, a poet wrote on social media that “people will spend their Valentine's Day all cute and loving, and clergy will be on the streets in black robes carrying pots of ashes like 'DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!'”

Some Catholic clergy are reminding their flocks that Ash Wednesday is clearly more important than Valentine's Day in the church calendar. part of its origins in honor of a third-century saint, but is now essentially a secular holiday.

In St. Augustine, Florida, Bishop Erik Pohlmeier was among those who encouraged couples in his diocese to Celebrate Valentine's Day a day early this year. That would have put the celebration on Mardi Gras, or Shrove Tuesday, a day traditionally marked by a big pancake dinner and other excessive and extravagant indulgences on the night before fasting and sobriety take over Lent. As Shakespeare's Falstaff might have said: Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we remember our deaths.

But Bishop Pohlmeier did not see the spirit of Valentine's Day as inherently at odds with the message of Lent.

In the season leading up to Easter, “we recognize in our faith that God himself has chosen to come to us in this completely self-giving way,” he said. “Human love is meant to be an expression of that kind of love.”

He pointed out that there was more drama in Catholic circles when St. Patrick's Day fell on a Friday in Lent last year, prompting some bishops to grant special exemptions for consuming meat on a holiday known for corned beef.

Outside Kansas City, Mr. Diamond, who also works as a consultant for nonprofits, planned to attend Mass with his family on Wednesday. But Tuesday evening, he and his wife were on their way to a brewery visit organized by School of Love, a ministry for Catholic couples supported by the Archdiocese of Kansas City. It was billed as a Valentine's Day evening, but scheduled for the 13th in deference to Ash Wednesday.

“It's a little bit complicated to organize the event and try to make a bunch of things that don't seem to fit work and make them work,” said Mike Dennihan, who co-founded School of Love with his wife Kristi Dennihan. He noted that starting the next day, both beer and candy would be available for those who gave up either, or both.

Elsewhere in Kansas City, the Chiefs prepared to celebrate their Super Bowl victory with a signature beer-soaked parade and rally downtown on Wednesday.

The team's kicker, Harrison Butker, who often speaks about his Catholic faith, said he would go to mass with his wife and children in the morning. Although he will take part in the parade, he added in an email to The New York Times: “I will not celebrate it in the usual way with food and drinks, as it is a day of fasting and abstinence from meat .”

For Mr. Butker, the trade-off is worth it.

“Just as there is no Super Bowl without sacrifice, there is no resurrection without the sacrifice of our Lord,” he wrote. “This will be difficult, but I must remember that if I want to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord at Easter, I must participate in His Passion during Lent.”