New Year's Resolutions

Summary of a Fr. Gerry Creedon homily from January 20, 2008

"Now the Lord has spoken who formed me as his servant from the womb, that Jacob be brought back to him and Israel gathered to him." Isaiah 49:5

"Here am I Lord, I come to do your will." Ps 40:2

At the Sport and Health Club the walls are filled with New Year's resolutions. "I will lose 5 pounds." "I will be ready for my bathing suit," etc. In the new year some are considering a face lift. It strikes me that many of our New Year's resolutions can become narcissistic obsessions.

A different perspective would be, "How can I respond to God's call this New Year? What is the will of God for me? What does God want of me?" A vocation is not reserved to religious life.

How do we frame God's will?

Some look to the observance of the Ten Commandments, as if they were the litmus test. I have not killed anyone. I am in Church. That takes care of the third and fifth. This is a minimalist approach to keeping out of trouble. Jesus imaged God's will as The Kingdom. This was the center of his preaching and ministry. As Moses offered the Ten Commandments on Mt Sinai, Jesus sat down on the mountain top to offer us his summary of Kingdom values; the Beatitudes. Blessed are the peace -makers, those who search for righteousness or justice, those who show mercy. God gives us forgiveness, so we need to offer mercy clemency, even amnesty, a word in disfavor with politicians these days.

The first reading offers a glimpse of the Kingdom, gathering. Jesus looked over Jerusalem, long before new walls were erected there, and wept, "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, I would have gathered you as a mother-hen would her chickens under her wing, and you would not." Pope John the 23rd's dying testament "Ut Unum Sint," ("that they may be one"), echoed John the Evangelist. "I pray that they may be one, as thou Father art in me and I in Thee, that the world may believe that you sent me." God wills a world where we transcend our differences of religion and race in a new unity. John's Gospel summarizes the moral vision of Jesus in the Law of Christ, "Love one another as I have loved you." How can we connect our lives and our New Year's resolutions with the vision of the Kingdom? Can our life's work, our professions and careers promote the values of the Kingdom? Many people, especially men, say, "When I retire I will work on the things I value and enjoy." Too often they retire and drop dead. Are the benefits of my work congruent with my faith values?

The new year is a time to consider aligning our intimate relationships with the Law of Christ, the call to love as he did. Yes, it may also be a time to look into our own hearts and consider their direction? It does not stop there. The Kingdom does not end at the garden gate. We also look out at our society and consider the world we choose to build. I recall a discussion my parents used to have. My father would say, "Well, I don't care what anybody says, the Creedons are no better and no worse than anybody else!" To which my mother would add mischievously, "We may be no better or no worse than anybody else, but we are better than a lot of them!" Do we have a conviction about the equal dignity of all people and the sacredness of the life of all, or do we draw lines?

Discovering God's call takes time. Why not set aside 5 or 10 minutes every day this week for prayer; not the prayer that offers God our needs and intentions, but a time to listen.

We are about to celebrate what might have been Martin Luther King's 79th birthday. He died at 39. He wrote, "If a man happens to be 36 years old as I happen to be, and some great truth stands before the door of his life, some great opportunity to stand up for that which is right and that which is just, and he refuses to stand up because he wants to live a little longer and he is afraid his home will get bombed, or he is afraid that he will lose his job, or he is afraid that he will get shot...he may go on and live till he is 80, and the cessation of breathing in his life is merely the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit. Man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true. So we are going to stand up right here... letting the world know that we are determined to be free."