Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We began the Christmas season in the Church this week and we will celebrate it until January 9th which is the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord. We also celebrate this Saturday, the Feast of Mary the Mother of God on January 1st or New Year’s Day. It is a day in which we remember Mary’s role in the life of her Son, Jesus Christ. We often celebrate secular New Year’s Day with promises or resolutions like, “New Year, New Me.” But often the new year’s resolutions only last a few weeks, the gyms are full for the first few weeks of the year, but then attendance drops off pretty quickly.

Instead of a “new year, new me,” how about “new year, and I will do my best to be the person God wants me to be.” The struggle with this is that we need to find out what that is, and the best way for that is to ask Him. The best way to do this is to draw close to him in prayer. The challenge with this is that when you ask God where he wants you to be he will answer and we may not always like the answer. This is because we sometimes have one idea of what we should be doing, but God has another idea. If we actually follow where God is leading us, it will always lead us to joy, even if it can be a lot of work or go through some suffering. The Apostles and many saints did not have an easy life, but they did enjoy eternal life with God.

The whole idea of “new year, new me” is that there is something in our life that we need to change or work on. The struggle is that most of us focus on the physical or material, like losing weight or working on being financially better, or reading more, but if we start off with our spiritual life, the rest of it will be better. This is primarily because if we draw closer to God who is love and the source of love, it will change our attitudes.

Studies show that it takes about six weeks to build or break a habit, good or bad. If we make the effort for six weeks straight to do something good in our lives or stop doing something bad, we have a better hope of making it stick. In this upcoming new year, we should take some extra time to pray and ask God where He wants us to be so that we can become the person that Jesus Christ wants us to be. We continue to celebrate the Christmas season in which God himself came to live the life that we lead and to preach, teach, and give us an example of how we are to live our lives in the way of Christ. Find some good Christian resources, especially during these cold months, so that we can build the life of prayer in our lives.

Merry Christmas,
Fr. Ken