Happy Eastertide, faithful readers. I’m sad to say that this is the final blog post of this series. I sincerely hope you have enjoyed traveling through Lent and into Easter with me, and that you have learned as much as I have during this journey. In this final post, I’ll be reflecting upon what I’ve learned during my journey through the suffering of Christ.

Media fast failed

At the beginning of Lent, it was very difficult to keep my fast from pizza, fries, Netflix and video games. Sitting in my room, bored, with nothing to do leads to many a temptation to waste my time watching TV and break my fast, but I powered through it, and, for the first few weeks at least, I managed to keep the fast.

Same with the food fast. It was very difficult to abstain from my favorite Caf staples at first, but it slowly became easier and easier as the weeks went on; just like with the media fast, I kept strong for the first few weeks.

And then came the last two weeks of Lent. It was the two weeks leading up to break, and I had assignment after assignment after assignment due — while the end of Lent was in sight, it seemed far too far away to actually seem like it could end. That’s when I started breaking the fast. At first it was an episode of “Futurama” during a class break just to relax and zone out, and then it was entire days sitting in my room watching TV while doing homework.

I no longer attempted to share in the sufferings of Christ, because the fast became too much for my undisciplined self to handle, and I began to outrightly and unrepentantly fail.

Reflection on first Lent experience

A fellow parishioner at my church said to me during this time that the worst Lents for him were the ones through which he learned the most, and I can definitely attest to that. I did terrible in this, my first Lent, but through my fast-breaking I have come to the realization that I cannot handle bearing even a minor cross — much less the burden of the sins of the world.

I came to this realization in full during the Good Friday mass at my church wherein we solemnly remembered the death of Christ. All of the icons in the church were shrouded in black, and the entire service had a melancholy feel. It was during this time that I came to the full realization that my failures during Lent happened so that I could fully participate in the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

Andrew Entzminger is a writer and blogger for The Chimes. He attends St. Matthew’s Anglican Catholic Church each Sunday in Newport Beach, enjoys listening to music and has been playing video games pretty much non-stop since Lent has ended.