Lent is Over, Now What?

“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.