Like a line out of Alanis Morsette’s nineties pop hit, “Ironic,” my birthday this year fell on Ash Wednesday. It was the first time, as far as I know, that the date celebrating my life on this earth coincided with the solemn day the Church reminds us of our mortality, and that, left to our own devices, we are merely dust.

Talk about “ironic.”

But even though I had to do my getting-a-year-older celebrating a day early on Fat Tuesday, I was grateful for the rather somber gift of having my birthday coincide with Ash Wednesday, of having the Church’s emphasis on human frailty merge with the joy of celebrating my life.

It was a reminder that although Lent, and really the whole Christian life, is less about focusing on death and mortality than on the Lord who saves us from them, the truth is that when we don’t have a good enough account of our sins, weaknesses and limitations, we can too easily fall into complacency and self-delusion, taking the Lord’s mercy for granted. If we forget that we need Jesus at every hour, we can begin to drift away from him.

At least that’s my experience. Over the past six years or so, I’ve undergone a kind of transformation in my spiritual and moral life, shifting from a mentality that was primarily characterized by obligation and rule-following, to one that is more squarely centered on relationship with Christ. Because in its most simple sense, that’s all the Christian life is: being with Jesus.

Overall, this experience of Christian life has been more fruitful and fulfilling than the legalism of my early 20s. It’s affirmed for me G.K. Chesterton’s observation that “Catholic doctrine and discipline may be walls; but they are the walls of a playground.” The walls are not what the Christian life, properly speaking, is about; it’s about playing in the playground, about being in union with God.

But at the same time, I’ve found there is a genuine temptation within this more relational framework to become self-indulgent, to cut corners and bend the rules. Others might need this discipline or to follow that commandment fastidiously, my logic seemed to go at times, but not me. I’ve arrived at what it’s all about: relationship with Jesus, not obsessively following the rules. I’m in the playground. What do I need the walls for?

There’s a shade of truth to this approach. But it’s also true that our pride and selfishness can take advantage of this attitude, and, with nothing left to keep ourselves in check, can lead to complacency, and eventually (and ironically), to falling out of relationship with Jesus.

To unpack what’s going on here theologically, I want to turn to the Dominican friar Servais Pinckaers, one of the most important moral theologians of the past century. Through his work during the papacy of St. John Paul II, which included contributing to the Catechism’s section on morality and John Paul’s encyclical “Veritatis Splendor,” Servais helped correct the misplaced preeminence of “obligation” in Catholic moral theology, returning our focus to the primacy of happiness and human flourishing in the Christian life.

Citing St. Thomas Aquinas, Pinckaers reminds us that the heart of the moral life is charity, and ultimately friendship with God. In fact, in his pivotal text, “The Sources of Christian Ethics,” he makes the point that without this charity, no other virtue — including justice and obedience — are fully alive.

Clearly, Pinckaers is no stuffy, “rigid” rules-obsessed legalist. Love, not rules, is at the heart of his account of Christian ethics.

And yet, he is just as emphatically clear that we cannot discard the commandments and moral teachings of the Church if we hope to remain in relationship with Jesus. He warns that a flimsy idea of love has “become the Open, Sesame,” a cure for all problems, “as if warmth of emotion liberates a person from all commandments and restraints.” The opposite is true. Citing St. Augustine, Pinckaers notes that “the greater the love, the greater the adherence to commandments,” because the commandments are expressions of God’s love. “Without the rectitude ensured by the commandments,” the Dominican continues, “love will not be true, will not survive.”

In other words, the Church’s moral commandments and prohibitions might not be “what it’s all about,” but they are essential for staying true to “what it’s all about.” Following the moral teachings and disciplines of the Church is needed for our friendship with God to survive.

Adding another detail to Chesterton’s image of the walled-in-playground can help us see this: The playground is on top of a tall island in the middle of the sea. Without the “walls” of the Church’s teaching and disciplines, our “love of God” can easily just become spiritualized “love of self,” which strays to the cliff’s edge and ultimately ends in “destruction of self.”

The Church’s moral teachings and practices are a gift to us, frail and still prone to sin as we are. They keep us accountable, and help us to test the integrity of our love, for as Pinckaers notes, “There is no true love without the willingness to sacrifice.”

Lent, with its disciplines of prayer, penance and almsgivings, is the perfect time to root out any complacency or self-indulgence that has crept into our life and our love. “What we give up” is not what Lent is about. But by setting reasonable disciplines that free us from earthly attachments so we can adhere more closely to Christ (and sticking to them even when we don’t feel like it!), we can help our love grow in purity and integrity.

Liedl, a Twin Cities resident, is the senior editor of the National Catholic Register and a graduate student in theology at the Saint Paul Seminary and School of Divinity.