This and That BLOG

Today is the feast of the Holy Family.

I know that many people like to make resolutions at this time of year. If you’re one of those let me suggest you have some spiritual resolutions in addition to any others you might have. Losing weight, giving up bad habits and the like are good things to do but they don’t typically affect our journey to holiness.

I suggest we think about things that could bring us closer to God and to advance in our spiritual life. We all know that loving God and loving one another are the Two Greatest Commandments. What if we made resolutions to improve our love quotient so to speak? What might that look like in terms of concrete actions?

Prayer is probably the best way to love God. Depending on your current prayer practices you might try to start spending time in Adoration or, if you’re already doing that, maybe add a little more time to it. You might make a point to read more Scripture. By the way, that’s also a good activity for your time in Adoration, but you can do it almost anywhere. You can start and stop Fr. Mike’s Bible in a Year podcast at any time so, if you haven’t done that yet, the New Year would be a great time to start. Another way to improve your relationship with God might be to add something else to your prayer life, like handing over some recurring problem to Him instead of relying on yourself to solve every problem. I can’t recall where I read it but years ago I saw a resolution that simply said “less of me and more of God”. That idea of relying more on Him and less on ourselves can be difficult but really powerful.

When thinking about loving others more I think the prime opportunity for most of us is to improve our love for those who are different than us. It’s pretty easy to care for those who look like us, talk like us, believe like us, etc. The big opportunity, I think, involves extending that love to those who are different than us. What about those who have different political views than ours? Or maybe they are of a different race or culture than us. A great spiritual resolution could be to select one person you are already familiar with, who is different than you in some significant way, and make an effort to get to know them better and to extend God’s love to them in some concrete way.

Other possibilities in terms of loving others could be some sort of service activities such as helping at St. Martin de Porres center or serving at St. John’s Breadline. Maybe there is something related to Catholic Charities.

One other possibility would be to change your prayer life to include in a special way someone you struggle to love. Pray for that person and also for yourself to change where needed.

By the way, many of these resolutions could also extend into Lenten activities, and Lent will be here before we know it. Ash Wednesday is on Feb 14th, just about six weeks from now. Just keep in mind that I’m not looking at these resolutions in a penitential way as you might during Lent. Spiritual resolutions should be a positive thing that provide an opportunity for us to grow closer to God and His people. As the response from today’s psalm at Mass says, “Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in His ways“.

Also, the first reading, from Sirach, and the second reading, from Colossians, contain material that could be very helpful in selecting spiritual resolutions. Think about how we honor our parents or maybe, how we allow our children to honor us as we age. And also, those attributes of “heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another…” How would it be to have a resolution around just one of those attributes?

Apparently I’m not the only one thinking about spiritual resolutions. A couple of days after I wrote this post I came across a couple of other posts on the same topic. One is from Busted Halo: https://bustedhalo.com/ministry-resources/3-spiritual-new-years-resolutions-inspired-by-st-john-the-apostle and another is from The Jesuit Post: https://thejesuitpost.org/2014/01/worth-reading-top-10-papal-resolutions/

Finally, this time of year is a good time to look back and see how things have gone this year ending. What do you have to be especially grateful for? Where have you encountered God? I know this sounds like Lent but if you look at it positively instead of from a penitential viewpoint it can be helpful.

I hope you consider improving what I refer to as your love quotient as a spiritual resolution and I hope you have a safe and holy New Year.

Finally, and this time I really mean it, I want to say thanks to all the families who witness so well to what a Christian family should be. Even those in imperfect families (that would be pretty much everyone, right?) can witness very powerfully in their efforts to live out our faith. I always think of the poor single parent who drags their kids to Mass when it would be so much easier for them to just not. Their sacrifice, and yours, is seen and appreciated.

That’s it for now. Thanks for reading.

I hope you have a great week.

Peace, Bob