From the Vicar — January 4th, 2026
New Year’s Resolutions: What’s the point?
Happy New Year! And with the new year, comes New Year’s resolutions. The attitudes towards these types of resolutions are deeply polarized. Some people embrace them enthusiastically, while others look on them with disdain, perhaps colored by past failures. And while the statistics show that most people don’t keep their resolutions much past January, I think it is still worth considering how they could serve a useful, and even holy purpose.
Our calendar feeds us a mental conundrum. On one hand, the years count up, but on the other hand, the days and months just repeat. Unconsciously, this can give us the attitude that this year, 2026, will be just like 2025. After all, we are back in January, back where we were 12 months ago: why would anything be different? We can feel trapped in an endless cycle, especially if, realistically, our life right now looks very much like it did on January 1, 2025, maybe just with a little less hair, and a few more pounds.
But this is a new year. None of us have ever lived the year 2026 before! One of the themes of the Advent Season, which begins the new liturgical year, even as it ends the calendar year, is that NOW is the time. Now is the time to welcome Jesus Christ into our lives. Even if we have done it before, we need to do it again, and if we have never done it, then we have this opportunity in 2026 to invite Him to be the Lord of our lives. This year presents a new opportunity to follow Christ!
If there is one good thing about New Year’s Resolutions, it is that they try to break us out of that cycle of doing the same old thing. So, then the two questions become: 1. What are some good resolutions to make? 2. How do I stick with them? To the first question, while hitting the gym or eating less cookies are good things, the most fundamentally life-changing kind of resolution would be to spend more time with Jesus! As we talked about all throughout Advent, if we want to be a disciple of Jesus, we need to spend time with Him. So, to the second question, how do we make a resolution that we can actually stick with?
Well, in his book Atomic Habits, by James Clear, he recommends that to form a habit that lasts, we need to do 4 things: we need to make it Obvious, Attractive, Easy, and Satisfying. After all, who would keep doing something that is forgettable, unattractive, difficult, and unsatisfying? So, how do we do that with a daily habit of prayer? Obvious? Give yourself visual reminders, like your bible by your bedside, a note on your bathroom mirror, or your rosary in your car. Attractive? Pray with a method that works with you. Prayer is conversation with God, and just like with real conversations, there are a variety of ways we talk and interact. The same is true with prayer. Easy? Pray in a time and place that actually works for your life. Maybe that’s in your bedroom first thing in the morning before the kids break in. Maybe it is in your car on the way to work. Do what works, not what you wish would work. Satisfying? As you pray daily, you will come to recognize how satisfying it is: that we have a Lord and Savior who wants to have a personal relationship with us! That the God who loved us into existence is not distant from us, but actually desires intimacy with us.
That is what I hope each of us will resolve to discover in 2026. That this is a new year, full of new opportunities to encounter the Lord, and to follow Him. From Fr. Mathias, and Deacon Peter and I: Happy New Year!!
Your servant in the Lord,
Fr. Joshua