The Morning After Fill

Oh happy Lent.

After a Sunday and a Monday Solemnity in honor of the highest Saint in our Church after the Blessed Mother, I can't help but feel the effects of my still unquieted appetites. It's all really subtle. So after Feast days, the temptation is to be content with the little pleasures now since passed of good times, good food, and perhaps good strong drink. The sun is shining, the weather is so favorable how can one meditate at all on the sufferings of Christ? How can one see at all the need for a more intimate conversion when so many supposed blessings are all around?

Then there's the flip side of the same weakness of the flesh, which happens the day after a day of fasting, ergo this blog's very title. Without realizing it, it's so easy to begin to eat as if the previous day ever happened, in fact the body wants to compensate. And yet, I think this is the real test: to exercise temperance in relation to good things the day after both fasting and feasting. During a fast (and here I mean even just abstaining from meat), it's easy (at least mentally) to remember to seek after virtue, especially fortitude--the entire day is concentrated with the theme of self-denial. And during a feast, it's relatively easier to "let go" and live in the joy of the moment. But for me, temperance helps me to see how conditional my love for the Lord becomes on the outskirts. The Lord always lavishes upon me his love and his graces especially during Lent, so much that it's easy to think that I have merited it all by myself (but shhhh, sometimes I don't let myself know that I'm really just weak), and that this grace will endure. How I betray myself when I reach for more snacks on a day after fasting. Heck, I don't even really snack all that much when it isn't Lent!!!

So my beloved fellow bloggers, here's to not only seeking virtue, but for choosing Christ in every moment. Lord, more than physical consolation, more than the fear of weakness, pain or discomfort, I choose to desire you. More than the beauty of this day or the beauty of my friendships, I desire to choose you. And more than my words express and my half-hearted attempts at nobility and strength, my gracious Lord I choose you.