“The Strife is o'er, the battle done.”
is the first line in an Easter hymn. After
seven weeks of making sacrifices for Lent, sometimes I feel the battle is done at Easter. It is really easy to quickly
get back to where I was before Lent as far as resuming what I had
given up and stopping the extra things I had done. It would be so
easy to spend the entire Octave of Easter sitting in a comfortable
chair eating and drinking what I had given up for Lent and playing
mindless computer games.
But I started
thinking, how does doing something special for two months and then
stopping help me become the best person I can be? The short answer is
that it probably doesn't. I needed to evaluate what I was doing and
the motivation behind it. I used to give up desserts or chocolate
every Lent and often managed to drop a few pounds. I did not give up
sweets or really any food this year and I also didn't lose any of
that winter weight I was planning to lose. But maybe that is a good
thing. Making a sacrifice for the Lord is good, getting my weight
down is also good.; but can I really do both at the same time? If I
give up candy or other food item with the intention of making myself
look or feel more attractive, it is not a sacrificial action. I am
just fooling myself that I am doing it for God.
I did give up some
leisure things I take pleasure in. My friends with whom I used to
play on line games might have noticed. The benefit to me was more
free time to pray, to think and reflect and to make better use of the
time which is a gift of God. Now that it is the Easter season I need
to continue to keep a balance in my life. So far I have managed to
not start any new games and I have been pretty good about doing
something more useful when I have a few minutes to kill. So now
instead of conquering the next level I am conquering the pile of
laundry in the basement. I may slip back before next Lent because I
am human, but hopefully I will have made some permanent gains.
What about the extra
things I have done: increased prayer time, adoration, weekday Masses?
It is so temping to slow down and relax now that Lent is over. It
is hard, with our hectic lives, to continue daily Mass or adoration
or an extra prayer time if we set Easter as our goal line. The ideal
would be that I have come to love my time in prayer so much that I am
not tempted to cut back after Easter. The reality is that, as a
typical human, I love my prayer time, but I also love sleeping in and
a myriad of other things that soak up the time I was going to use for
prayer like a sponge. I am beginning to realize that I need to keep
sacrificing, at least in some ways, if I really want to grow more in
the direction of holiness.
Maybe my thoughts on
Lent need to change. Like an athlete who practices a specific move
over and over again in anticipation of being able to execute during
the big game, I need to use the time of preparation, (Lent) to build
the skills I need to conquer sin and death. Like that clutch hit or
last minute free throw, I am a whole lot more likely to attain my
goal, (heaven) if I do the preparation.
Christ opened that
gates of heaven on Easter, we all are called to try to improve
ourselves during Lent and beyond so we can enter those gates when the
time comes.
