When we start to approach the new year, it can be tempting to look over the top of that dividing midnight and invent some shiny, perfect version of ourselves for the other side. Of course, we probably don’t frame it that way when we’re considering what we might learn, or do, or try this year. But at least in my own experience, the more grandiose and ambitious my plans for the coming months… the more likely it is that I’ve envisioned some alternate self to stand triumphant at the end of it.
Usually I try to combat this tendency by scaling down my goals, choosing small things I can do each day – an extra prayer, a quick note, one more vegetable at dinner… Small steps to better seek the Good in my life.
But as the monks of Belmont Abbey continue to teach me – through the Benedictine prayer and work that so permeate this remarkable place – the hallmarks of stability and stewardship offer a gentle, corrective vision to my tendency to reimagine a “New Year me.”
Stability, through which the monks live out their collective and individual commitments to this Abbey, invites us all to embrace the circumstances and the space into which God has called us. It offers a discerning groundedness that clarifies who we are and where we stand. Stewardship, meanwhile, takes loving responsibility for cultivating the gifts that flourish in this very rootedness. Usually when we think of stewardship, we think in monetary or environmental terms, but really we are called to respond in active, joyful gratitude to all the blessings of our lives.
Keeping this in mind, I hope to approach my resolutions this year from a slightly different perspective: less “who do I want to become?” and more “how can I be more fully the person God made me to be?” Certainly God speaks to us in the desires and aspirations of our hearts, but sometimes we forget, too, that (as the Abbey’s chaplain, Fr. James Raber, recently reminded me) “we are God’s gift to ourselves” and to others. Already.
As we consider our new year’s goals through this Benedictine lens, let’s ask for the grace to see ourselves with God’s vision – in clarity, humility, and merciful love. Starting the year isn’t about transforming to match our own (or anyone’s else’s) idealized preference. It’s about embracing the gift of our lives with trust and allowing Christ to lead us, in the concrete circumstances of this gift, wherever He’s inviting us to go.
This weekend let’s take a few minutes to ask the Holy Spirit what invitation He’s extending to us, not just in what we want to be and do, but in what we already – albeit imperfectly – are.
What gifts has He given you in the tenderness of His wisdom, and how might you cultivate these to become ever more fully the image of God you were made to be?
Wishing you a blessed 2025!
