A NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION YOU CAN KEEP

You can actually keep any New Year’s resolution you make. You really can! The proviso is that it has to be inspired by God. Something you know that God wants you to do, here and now. If he wants you to do it, by that fact you know that it will be possible. “For nothing will be impossible for God” (Luke 1:37). God will never ask you to do something which you cannot do. He will never ask you to fly to the moon or to swim across the ocean. He will not ask you to feed all the hungry of the world or to end the scourge of war. There are things that God will ask – some big, some small, some difficult, some easier – and he will ask with confidence, because he knows that with his help you can do it. 

Years ago, I would have told you that I could never become Catholic. But then one day I found myself saying, while sitting in my care outside of the office where I worked, “I have to become Catholic.” This was a big step for a WASP* like me, with strong evangelical leanings. But once I knew that it was God asking me to do it, I never looked back. By my own willful choice I could never have made such a change, but God gave me the conviction and the grace to carry through. The same was true of the call to the priesthood, which came to me even before I was received into the Church. They were two big decisions that required great changes in my life that I could never have handled by myself.

God may not be asking you to make a dramatic change such as he did of me thirty-one years ago, but my point is that, whatever change he asks for, be it radical or not, YOU CAN DO IT! God is not like an MLB manager asking you to pitch nine innings of perfect baseball, or an executive mandating an impossible sales quota, or a parent demanding straight-As, or an opera director expecting you to sing like Pavarotti. People can provide advice and encouragement, but they cannot grace you with the power to do what they want you to do. God, however, can and does.

This is why it is important to find out what God might want you to do. Is there a New Year’s resolution he wants you to make? The making of this resolution should be of his inspiration if there is to be any hope of keeping it. If you are like most people, there are a lot of things which you would like to improve or change about yourself. But if you want success, the immediate question to ask is, what is the one thing now that God wants me to change? He knows I am human and therefore does not expect me to take on ten issues at once. But there may be one thing he wants me to tackle. Discovering this one thing will lead to success, for the Finger of God, the Holy Spirit, is touching this spot. In this place he is offering actual grace.

It takes courage to recognize where God is asking for change. It also takes patience, for we are weak, and most likely there will be some failures or missteps. Perseverance and even repentance are sometimes required. Maybe a needed change in strategy or an adjustment in approach. A spiritual director or confessor can be helpful in this. But a person who knows what God has called him or her to take on will not lose confidence, since they know that with his call comes grace. “God is faithful, and he will not allow you to be tempted beyond your strength” (1 Corinthians 10:13). “For I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

So how do I know what resolution, if any, that God wants me to make? Spiritual discernment begins by commending oneself to God and then searching one’s heart. Where is God touching it? Where is it weighed down? What does it need to experience more freedom? What inspires it? Does my heart feel a holy excitement when I think of doing this or that? “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37).

*WASP = White Anglo-Saxon Protestant 

FATHER SCOTT