The Three Thieves of Time — How to Win Your Life Back This Lent
- 4 days ago
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Updated: 48 minutes ago
Every year, Lent arrives like a gentle but firm invitation from God. It’s the Church’s way of saying:“Slow down. Look deeper. Come home.” And every year, I realise how much I need that invitation. Because if I’m being honest, there are days when I feel like my time simply evaporates. I wake up with good intentions, a desire for prayer, a time for God, and even a to‑do list… but somehow evening comes and I wonder, “What actually happened today?”
Recently, I heard a reflection about the three biggest things that steal our time. As I listened, I couldn’t help connecting them to Lent because these 40 days are exactly when the Lord invites us to confront these thieves head-on.
So here they are, not as a harsh judgment, but as a wake‑up call for all of us trying to live our Catholic faith in a real, busy, and noisy world.
1. Distraction — The Quiet Thief That Feels Harmless
Distraction is sneaky. It never shows up announcing, “I’m here to ruin your day!” Instead, it whispers:
“Just check your phone for a minute.”
“Scroll while you eat breakfast.”
“Watch one more thing before bed.”
But before we know it, the minutes become hours and the hours become days, where prayer, silence, and presence slowly fade.
And spiritually, this matters because distraction often becomes a subtle form of temptation, not always to something evil, but to something lesser that pulls us away from what is best. “Keep awake and pray that you may not come into temptation” (Matthew 26:41).
Lent reminds us: We cannot grow spiritually if every moment is filled with noise. God often speaks in stillness, not in constant stimulation.
Distraction isn’t sinful by itself but it blinds us from what truly matters, our relationship with God and our vocation to holiness, especially within our families.
In the language of the Sacred Scripture, sin is often described as “missing the mark”, a deviation from our true goal. Our goal is God Himself. Distractions become dangerous when they redirect our hearts from God, little by little, until we start living scattered rather than centred.
This is why Our Lord’s words to Martha are so piercing in our time: “You are anxious and troubled about many things; only one thing is necessary” (Luke 10:41–42). Lent gently asks us: What is my ‘one thing’? What am I allowing to compete with it?
A Lenten Alternative:
Begin your mornings with prayer and 5 minutes of silence before anything else.
Place your phone in another room during meals and family time.
Choose one (or more) app(s) to fast from during Lent (social media, YouTube, TikTok, whichever consumes you the most).
Set a sacred 10-15 minutes "God appointment" daily like you would do in any meeting.
Small changes can transform the entire rhythm of your day. Because holiness is not usually built by dramatic moments but by daily fidelity, choosing again and again to return to Christ when your attention drifts. And each time you return, you are not merely ‘refocusing’, you are converting.
2. Disorganisation — When Life Feels Chaotic
You know that feeling: You’re running late. You can’t find the school uniform, the keys, the lunch box, the printed form, and the list just goes on. You lose track of what matters because everything feels urgent and scattered.
And in that moment, our heart is tempted to live in reaction rather than in contemplation. Chaos doesn’t only affect our schedule, it affects our soul; because what is scattered outside often becomes scattered within.
Disorganisation steals time not only from our tasks but from our peace.
Yet peace is not a luxury in our Catholic life; it is a gift from Christ: “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you” (John 14:27). When disorder constantly robs us of peace, it can also rob us of recollection, that interior stillness where we are able to listen to God.
In our Catholic life, it steals time from God most of all. We rush through our prayers, or postpone them, or skip them entirely, not because we don’t want to pray, but because we’re tired, overwhelmed, and mentally cluttered.
This is where Lent becomes merciful: it helps us see that prayer is not merely another item on the list; prayer is the anchor of the list. “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given unto you” (Matthew 6:33). When we put God second, everything else tends to feel heavier, because we carry it without grace.
Scripture also reminds us that God is a God of order, not of confusion: “God is not a God of confusion but of peace” (1 Corinthians 14:33). That does not mean our lives must be perfect, but it does mean that our lives should have a spiritual direction, a centre. And that centre is our Lord Jesus Christ.
Lent calls us into order. It is why the Church gives us structure:
40 days
Fasting
Abstinence
Almsgiving
Prayer
Sunday Obligation
A pathway toward Easter
There’s a rhythm to the Catholic spirituality that restores peace when everything feels messy. This rhythm is not meant to burden us, but to free us. It is like the Church handing us a spiritual “rule of life” so that we stop being driven by urgency and start being guided by grace.
Even the saints understood this: holiness grows through faithful rhythms, small daily acts repeated with love. In a noisy world, our Catholic soul thrives with simple structure: fixed moments for prayer, work offered to God, and regularly return to the Sacraments.
A Lenten Alternative:
Start your day with a morning offering, then choose 3 priorities.
When overwhelmed, do the next right thing slowly and say: "Jesus, I Trust in You".
Pick one room or one small area to intentionally “restore to peace.”
Declutter something physical as a form of spiritual cleansing: a drawer, your desk, your wardrobe.
Set a family schedule before bed just for God: Holy Scripture, today's Gospel, examination of conscience, gratitude, or simply contemplating God's work in your lives.
Order in our home creates order in our soul.
3. Poor Decision-Making — When We Don’t Choose What Truly Matters
This thief is harsher than the others because it demands honesty.
Because here we are no longer speaking only about what “happens to us,” but about what we choose. And the moral life is built on choices. In Catholic terms, this is where temptation becomes personal: not merely distraction around us, but consent within us (James 1:14–15).
Sometimes we simply choose the wrong things:
We say yes when we should say no.
We delay what is important.
We choose comfort over virtue.
We waste emotional and spiritual energy on things that don’t lead us closer to Christ.
And often, we make decisions reactively instead of prayerfully. This is why the Holy Scripture urges discernment: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God” (Romans 12:2). When we decide without prayer, we often decide from fear, pride, appetite, or impulse, rather than from grace.
From the beginning, Sacred Scripture shows us that history turns on choices. Adam and Eve made the wrong choice (Genesis 3). They reached for something that appeared good: the pleasure of possessing, the desire to “be like God,” the promise of wisdom. It was a “good” grasped selfishly, apart from God, and not ordered to the good of others or the good of all. The first sin was not merely eating fruit; it was choosing self over communion, desire over obedience, and immediate satisfaction over trust in God.
Lent is the season that teaches us that we cannot become holy by accident. We have to choose it. Because holiness is not a feeling; it is a decision. In the language of the moral life, virtue is formed by habitual good choices, strengthened by grace. And Lent gives us daily opportunities to choose rightly: to say no to lesser goods so we can say yes to the Highest Good which is God Himself.
The saints didn’t stumble into sanctity, they walked toward it, sometimes trembling, sometimes crawling, but always choosing again and again. And they did so by continually returning to Christ through repentance and the Sacraments. The saints show us that failure is not the end, refusal to return is. Each sincere return to God is already a victory of grace.
A Lenten Alternative:
Ask before any choice: “Does this bring me closer to God or to myself?”
Use Sunday as your weekly reset to plan your week with God at the centre.
Make one courageous decision you’ve been avoiding: forgiveness, setting a boundary, removing a temptation.
Return to the Sacrament of Confession — there is no better decision you can make this Lent.
What We Gain When We Take Back Our Time
When we fight against distraction, disorganisation, and poor choices, we don’t just “become more productive.” We become more present.
Present to God. Present to our spouse. Present to our children. Present to our real mission on earth. Not the noise, not the busyness, not the pressure to keep up, but the quiet call to holiness.
Lent is not about punishing ourselves. It’s about healing what has been scattered.
It’s about saying: “Lord, I want to give You my time… because my time is really my life.”
Simple Catholic Practices to Replace our Stolen Time This Lent
To make this practical, here are the alternatives you can start today:
Instead of scrolling…
Spend time with God in Adoration
Pray a decade of the Holy Rosary
Read one verse of Sacred Scripture
Write down three things you’re grateful for
Talk to your child or spouse with full attention
Instead of rushing from task to task…
Pause and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance
Offer your work as a sacrifice for someone in need
Instead of chasing comfort…
Choose a small act of self-denial
Do a hidden act of charity
Spend time with someone who is lonely or struggling
Lent is Not About Losing Time — It’s About Redeeming It
We only get one Lent this year. We don’t get to redo these 40 days. The Lord is inviting us, not with guilt, but with love, to reclaim our days so they may lead us toward eternal life.
If distraction, disorganisation, or poor decisions have been stealing your time, your peace, or your prayer… then let this be the Lent where everything begins to change.
Not perfectly. But intentionally. And with God.
Because the truth is simple: When you give God your time, He gives you back your life.
If this reflection on the three thieves of time helped you desire to take your life back this Lent, you can go deeper with Fasting and Feasting with Christ. Your support helps us continue this work of thoughtful Catholic writing.
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