Mak­ing a New Year’s Resolution 

Why should I make any New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions? I nev­er keep them.
Almost all of us have had the expe­ri­ence of want­i­ng to begin a new year resolv­ing to improve, to do some things bet­ter than we have before. It is nat­ur­al to have hope, to want to believe we aren’t stuck in the ways we cur­rent­ly behave, and yet, all of us have the expe­ri­ence that we haven’t done too well with our past res­o­lu­tions. In fact, at this time of the year, the news­pa­per car­toons almost always point out the humor­ous side of our try­ing to make res­o­lu­tions that don’t seem to have a chance of succeeding.

Why do our res­o­lu­tions so often fail?
So often our good inten­tions fail and fail quick­ly. There are many rea­sons, of course, and some of them relate to how real­is­tic our resolv­ing is, but some­times, we resolve to end addic­tive behav­ior with­out real­ly giv­ing it a chance. Most of the time, most of our res­o­lu­tions are our best attempts at just hav­ing stronger will pow­er. Though there are out­stand­ing exam­ples of hero­ic virtue, and some peo­ple real­ly do quit addic­tive behav­ior “cold turkey,” there are far too many exam­ples of failure.

One instinct deep in Igna­t­ian Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty is the sense that, while it is good to devel­op stronger will pow­er and self-con­trol, real change in our lives actu­al­ly hap­pens most reli­ably when it comes from our deep­est desires. Ignatius knew, from his own expe­ri­ence, just as we often dis­cov­er in ther­a­py, in spir­i­tu­al direc­tion, upon reflec­tion on our own expe­ri­ence, that we usu­al­ly do what we want to do. We rarely do what we don’t want to do. The secret to change is to reform our desires - dis­cov­er­ing what our deep­est desires are and try­ing to change or re-form them. This was no self-help process for Ignatius and many of the Saints. It was the process of get­ting to know Jesus and falling in love with him. Once we fall in love with some­one, all our desir­ing changes.

Don’t I already know Jesus? Don’t I already have a rela­tion­ship with him?
Often this sounds too sim­ple to us. Don’t I already know Jesus? Haven’t I already fall­en in love with him? Of course, hear­ing the invi­ta­tion at the begin­ning of this new year to exam­ine our rela­tion­ships with Jesus and let them be renewed this upcom­ing year, begins with the free­dom to acknowl­edge that there is room for growth here. And, it starts with some­thing of an attrac­tion, a small desire, even a bit of curios­i­ty that won­ders, “What more can I dis­cov­er? How might my heart be more cap­tured by Jesus?”

Love always directs our hearts. But, there are oth­er spir­its, too. At times we dis­cov­er the sad real­i­ty that falling out of love changes our hearts dra­mat­i­cal­ly, too. Once we lose that affec­tion, that attrac­tion, that draw, then trou­ble begins. Where­as before we expe­ri­enced a won­der­ful ener­gy that wants to spend as much time as we can with some­one we love and wants to do any­thing we can for the one we love, now we expe­ri­ence a cool­ness, an empti­ness, a dis­tance, and unfor­tu­nate­ly, at times, the oth­er starts to annoy us. Some­times we say, “it just hap­pened,” but upon reflec­tion, we real­ize sad­ly that there was sin involved. We made some bad choic­es, some self­ish choic­es. We stopped con­tribut­ing to the rela­tion­ship. What isn’t grow­ing is usu­al­ly dying. And, of course, sin is con­ta­gious, and we live in a cul­ture that does­n’t sup­port self-less lov­ing. There are the mes­sages: What about me? What about my needs? We tend to keep score. There are bad spir­its among us that seem deter­mined to make lov­ing dif­fi­cult, that seem to pre­vent wounds from heal­ing, that seem to pro­mote divi­sion, high­light dif­fer­ences and ulti­mate­ly lead to war. This whole pat­tern, which we have under­stood as “Orig­i­nal Sin,” has described for us what we is over­come by Jesus’ com­ing, and by his life, death, res­ur­rec­tion and gift of the Spir­it. Jesus destroyed sin and death’s pow­er over us. Re-con­nec­t­ing with him this new year is re-con­nec­t­ing with his pow­er to free our hearts to love again.

How do we get to know and fall in love with Jesus?
Get­ting to get to know Jesus in a new way, at a deep­er lev­el is just like get­ting to know any­one. We begin by spend­ing more time with a per­son. We pay atten­tion to him/her. We get to know the sto­ry of that per­son more com­plete­ly. Even­tu­al­ly, we become more and more curi­ous and more and more fas­ci­nat­ed by how the per­son acts, what moti­vates that per­son, how he or she thinks. Of course, the key here is not only to learn more about Jesus, but to come to real­ly know him, to expe­ri­ence a rela­tion­ship. It is easy to imag­ine that Jesus knows me. It is more dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that I am in a rela­tion­ship with Jesus, and we know each oth­er and there is some­thing spe­cial about this rela­tion­ship. For exam­ple, some of us will get to know Jesus and become real­ly fas­ci­nat­ed by his moth­er and father and that will shape our sense of who he is and our rela­tion­ship with him. Some of us will come to love the way he choos­es and inter­acts with his dis­ci­ples. Many of us will learn a great deal about Jesus from how he tells sto­ries and reveals things about God and about the King­dom of God. Still oth­ers of us will become engaged by how Jesus inter­acts with and heals sin­ners and sick peo­ple. Per­haps we will iden­ti­fy with this or that sto­ry which will char­ac­ter­ize our par­tic­u­lar rela­tion­ship with him.

What about my res­o­lu­tions?
While we are get­ting to get to know the Lord, the things we may have been tempt­ed to resolve begin to change. We may still need to lose weight and exer­cise more, but what will inevitably rise to the sur­face are pat­terns that are like his. Attrac­tion so nat­u­ral­ly leads to imi­ta­tion. Jesus is our friend, a won­der­ful Lord with a pow­er­ful way of lov­ing and sur­ren­der­ing his life to the plan of his Father -- that he be Ser­vant for us. The more we open our hearts to a deeply per­son­al friend­ship with Jesus, the more we will open our hearts to ask the Father to use us, to be ser­vants, too.

Then our desir­ing starts to be trans­formed. We will grad­u­al­ly and more deeply begin to ask for the graces we need - which is a more hum­ble place to begin than mak­ing bold promis­es. We’ll ask our Lord to puri­fy our desir­ing. We will ask for the grace to be drawn into the pat­tern of Jesus’ lov­ing and for­giv­ing. We’ll ask for the desire to sur­ren­der more, to let go of our own needs more com­plete­ly so that we can give our­selves to the needs of oth­ers first. We will begin to see the peo­ple clos­est to us with Jesus’ eyes, with Jesus’ heart. Our love for them won’t depend upon how much they please us or even how much they rec­i­p­ro­cate our love. That isn’t the way Jesus loves us. Jesus loves us because we are sin­ners. Jesus loves us because we need for­giv­ing and heal­ing. Jesus loves us because we need loving.

Grad­u­al­ly, our res­o­lu­tions get freer and more about self-don­a­­tion. We open our hands in prayer and say, “Lord, these are my desires and I am ask­ing you for the grace to live them.” Grad­u­al­ly, the oth­er spir­its lose their pow­er, their attrac­tion. As Jesus con­fronts and con­tra­dicts the val­ues of our cul­ture in us and around us, the sil­li­er all that kind of desir­ing becomes. We don’t change our way of con­sum­ing, our way of see­ing our role in the world or hear the cry of the poor day after day by strength­en­ing our own will power.

Our lifestyle and our choic­es real­ly become trans­formed when we become peo­ple who know, beyond any­thing else, that we are loved uncon­di­tion­al­ly by our God. When we become lovers of Jesus, we will nat­u­ral­ly love the way he loves. When we become fol­low­ers of Jesus this will be a blessed new year, indeed. And those who are sin­ners among us, the poor around the world, and those who suf­fer the trag­ic effects of sin, divi­sion and war, will expe­ri­ence the difference.