It’s cliché to write about how short-fused we’ve become. In the golden age of comfort, where snacks are delivered to us by strangers or drones at the press of a glass rectangle in our pockets, how can we be anything but insulated? Every pain point, every hint of friction, is sanded and refined away until our entire existence is a glassy, smooth slide from one thing to the next.

There’s nothing wrong with comfort. Many of the things that contribute to our high standard of living is a gift from God. How thankful we should be for the scientific breakthroughs that have alleviated pointless suffering, the electricity that powers our economy, and soft skills that enable us to put food on the table. The age of comfort is not something to be despised, but to be accepted with gratitude. It was built on the hardships of those that came before us.

A struggle that anyone who has focused on their health will eventually encounter is moving from the period of transition to a period of maintenance. If you wake up significantly overweight, with just a few months of intense focus and lifestyle adjustment, you will meaningfully improve your health. But that time of transition is intense, and requires dedication that no one can sustain over a lifetime. Thankfully, once you attain your health goals, maintaining them does not require the same intensity, but it does require commitment. There is no body composition that will tolerate inactivity and ice cream every night. But making that switch, from intensity to intentionality, is where many of us fall off the track.

Our bodies are resilient and adaptable, and they will adjust in rapid succession if you change the parameters quickly enough. But rapid weight loss can result in rapid weight gain if things revert to the mean. The problem is not that we aren’t serious or committed, it’s that we’re using the wrong lens.

Health is a lifetime commitment, and requires long perspective over decades to achieving lasting positive outcomes. We can’t just avoid regular drinking for three or four months, but we have to change our relationship to alcohol. We can’t skip donuts after Mass for a season, but make them the exception, not the rule. When we take a long view, the urgency and hurry dissipate. I’m not skipping donuts just for today, I’m a person who eats foods based on their overall nutrition for my body. I’m not a person who walks when it’s nice outside, I’m a person who walks every day no matter what.

This correlates directly to the spiritual life. We can clean up our act in Lent, and maybe even kick an attachment to sin that we’ve fought for decades. But Lent is a season; holiness is the work of a lifetime. We need to be intense in Lent, we need to shift our focus and get intense, but it should be in service of a larger arc in our story. It should be the season that propels us to the next level, to a deeper love, to a more authentic vocation. The risk this Lent is not that you drink a soda or snack between meals; the risk is that you let the season pass without any real effort.

A long lens is required to achieve the results we want in our physical health and our spiritual health. Every day is an opportunity, but missing any one day won’t break us. We are the Easter people, and that means no matter what, we do the work.