Guest Post by Pro-life Leader Frank Pavone, National Director, Priests for Life
A recent AP-NORC poll found that 57% of respondents said they plan on making one or more New Year’s resolutions, while 43% said they do not intend to make any.
I’m definitely in the 57% and always have been. I like New Year’s resolutions, despite the fact that I, like most others, find that around February not much has changed.
The reason I like them anyway is that there’s something very Christian about making a New Year’s resolution.
Think about it. Christ comes at Christmas, not to be born all over again in a Manger, but to be born in us. “To those who did accept him, he gave power to be children of God” (John 1:12). He brings us a whole new way of life. “The grace of God has appeared… training us to reject godless ways” (Titus 2:11).
Deeply embedded in Christian spirituality over the ages is the practice of a daily “examination of conscience.” We ask ourselves how well we’ve done. We recall our sins of the day. And then, as one version of the Act of Contrition says, we pray, “I firmly resolve, with the help of your grace, to sin no more.”
We know we’re going to sin. But we reject it, we oppose it, we fight it, we resolve. And we know it’s not about our strength, but Christ in us. Yet that doesn’t make us passive; it makes us active collaborators with his grace. Without him, we can do nothing (see Jn. 15:5), but in him all things are possible (see Phil. 4:13).
There’s an old Latin saying about the Church, “ecclesia semper reformanda” – that is, the Church always reforming. Paul tells the Corinthians, “our inner self is being renewed day by day” (2 Cor. 4:16), and that we “are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory” (2 Cor. 3:18). He writes to the Philippians, “forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:13-14).
The examples go on and on. Christian vigilance, discipline, daily battle against evil in ourselves and in the world, are part and parcel of our calling.
New Year’s resolutions fit into this perfectly. They’re not just about diet. They’re about taking the next good, small step in virtue.
And the Biblical lesson is not that we resolve today and achieve tomorrow. It’s that we get up, fall down, and get up again – and again and again.
So go ahead, have courage, and make that resolution. One is enough. But make it and don’t be discouraged. Re-make it every day.
Happy New Year!
