Looking For a New Year's Resolution? Exercise Your Spiritual Life in 2015!

(CHRISM NEWS/ FR. PAUL VASQUEZ) So, it’s a New Year and you’re deciding if you are going to embark on some resolutions to make yourself better than you are. If you’re deciding this it means you have done some reflection. This is one of the essential parts of the spiritual life—recognizing that we as human beings, and I in particular, are not yet perfected. Perhaps you have gone far enough to say, “Perhaps I should get my rear in gear and break out of the old (unsatisfying) routine.” Great! What do you do about it though? There are certain steps the spiritual masters have recommended. Not some Hindu guru on a mountaintop, but people like Sts. Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, Benedict, and many others.

1) Remove serious sin from your life. Work even on lesser sins.

Because the spiritual life is one of grace, that is, God’s life within us which takes root at baptism, you have to have it to grow. It is not a surprise to me when penitents come to the confessional and feel alienated from God or experience something like Him feeling distant. Of course God, who is present to all things keeping them in existence if nothing else, is not the one who caused the distance. It is sin. God didn’t cause sin. That’s all us. So, in order to grow close to God, we first must abandon the idea that we really are “good people” (whatever that means). We are sinners. Of course, in order to do this we must…

2) Frequent the Sacraments. Pay attention when there.

Yes, Catholics are only required to go to confession once a year so they can receive communion worthily at least once a year, but achieving that minimal goal, as important as that is, is not vibrant living. Apparently Nazi doctors unconscionably experimented to determine exactly how many calories someone needed to be kept barely alive. It shouldn’t have been done then and you can’t grow on a starvation diet. Going to mass every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation is not an optional, oh-I’ll-do-it-and-see-if-it-will-help kind of thing. It’s just the minimum that gets you in the door. Go to as many daily masses as you can fit in without neglecting your other duties knowing it is not required. Most Catholics would greatly benefit from increasing the frequency of their confessions (once a month is about right). All Catholics should stop receiving communion automatically every time they go to Church without reflecting on whether they are in a state of grace, which leads us to…

3) Examination of Conscience.

St. Josemaria refers to the traditional Catholic practice of general and particular examination of conscience. The general is what we contemporaries are used to calling examination, that is, a review of what we have done or failed to do, in thought, word, and deed.If the matter is serious, and we did it with full knowledge of the gravity of the offense and with deliberate knowledge, that’s a mortal sin, i.e. it kills the life of God within you (grace—see above). Confession is the only thing that cures that ordinarily (and no, making an act of contrition is not sufficient for receiving communion in almost every circumstance in the United States). Unlike actual sacramental confession which can be done once a month and still do well, the general examination is not something which is done only when going to confession.Ideally this should be done every day and most suitably at night, in reflecting on how the day went. The particular examination involves making concrete resolutions to correct those faults. Forming a plan without having the proper information will not be very useful, nor reviewing one’s faults as a purely academic exercise. We review to renew. Both work in tandem.

4) Establish a spiritual discipline.

Through all of this and in support of all of this is a prayer life. This involves establishing a routine. We priests and consecrated persons have the Liturgy of the Hours to help establish this (which I recommend to you as well), but laypeople’s lives are not necessarily well suited to that sort of routine. It is not as important at first how much time one is putting aside, so much as acquiring the discipline to have some routine, no matter how small beyond what is required in the Precepts of the Church. Consider seriously getting in an hour or half hour or 10 minutes of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament every week. If the troops aren’t clamoring to get out of the pews (God bless all parents!), linger after mass instead of bolting for the door. Whatever you decide, stick to it. If you are trying to maintain something and you realize you bit off more than you can chew, scale back, but never abandon. The desert Fathers and others discovered a brand new problem—acedia, spiritual boredom/ennui/slothfulness/torpor. Discipline is your friend, not your enemy, as much as for an athlete (St. Paul anyone?). But even discipline is inadequate if you don’t exercise your love, so…

5) Include more than formal prayer in your life.

Although this could be included in #4, it bears emphasizing into its own point. It is not enough to recite Hail Mary and Our Father, but to meditate on the mysteries of Our Lord’s life while praying the rosary. Written, formal, and memorized prayer all has its proper place in the spiritual life. They are necessary and effective. Nevertheless, it is not the be-all and end-all of spiritual practice. Beyond this is meditation, i.e. taking some text or mystery of the faith and “chewing” upon it, looking at it from many angles, applying it to one’s life, etc. St. Teresa in particular was insistent that it didn’t matter what method one used so long as one used one. One of her suggestions, beyond what was found in books, was looking at some picture of Jesus. The conversation with God is equally important. Talk to Him. He doesn’t bite. At the pinnacle is contemplation, being “lost” in prayer in the presence of the living God. This is something He does for you and with you. You can’t make it happen. Indeed even St. Teresa said it mostly never lasted longer than about 30 min – 1 hour, and most of the time, like everyone else, she was meditating.

Even after all of these 100’s of years, the wisdom remains the same. If I can boil this down, I would say cultivate a reflective approach to life. Anything else is inhuman. As part of this reflection, though, it must be God who authored human life and continues to be intimately involved in the nuts and bolts of every instant.

Fr. Paul Vasquez was Ordained in 1998 for the Archdiocese of Omaha. He holds a M.Div. and is Associate Pastor at St. Cecilia Church, the Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Omaha.

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