Resolving the Self
Every year about this time the world becomes a confessional wrapped in glitter and celery juice. We promise ourselves we will walk more, eat less, write more, scroll less, and so on down the long list of ways we might finally become immortal. There is a beautiful foolishness in this, the January confidence that we can rewire the universe by Monday. By February, we have misplaced the gym shoes and are hiding our chocolate behind a bag of lettuce. It is wonderfully human. It is wildly funny. And it is, in its own cracked way, holy.
Because the act of resolving is not really about the peanut butter or the pushups. It is about the twinge of longing that moves in the heart when we realize we are not yet the people we could be. St. Augustine knew what it felt like to chase pleasures that gleamed and whispered but did not satisfy. He knew that to resolve anything worth resolving, we must first love rightly. To reorder our loves is harder than reordering our diet, and that is why the soul quivers at the word resolution. Beneath every spreadsheet of goals is the quiet prayer, “Lord, make me new and keep me from pretending that newness means perfection.”
St. Thomas Aquinas might chuckle kindly at our lists and call them half-formed habits. He would remind us that the virtuous life is not a self-improvement project but the slow training of desire toward the good. The good, he said, is what everything seeks. Even the one making resolutions seeks the good; the trick is remembering what the good actually is. A six-pack of virtues would serve us better than a six-pack of abs. Aquinas would say, cultivate temperance and patience, and joy might come sneaking in through the side door. The point of habit is not to control life but to make room for love to act freely.
If you want to know whether a resolution will set you free or wrap you in knots, ask St. Ignatius. He would have you discern. What stirs your heart with consolation? What breeds anxiety and pride? His wise little test can save us from resolutions that only deepen our self-absorption. Some resolutions are just another way to polish our own egos. Ignatius would steer us toward resolutions that lead to interior freedom, that help us breathe easier in God’s presence, that let grace take the lead.
And then there is our practical friend St. Benedict, who would not be impressed by dramatic resolutions. He preferred stability, the steady fidelity of daily life. His monks vowed to stay put, to pray, to work, to forgive, to sweep the same floor tomorrow. He understood that holiness grows slowly, like moss on a stone. The Benedictine way is not a crash course in sanctity but a rhythm of conversion, a daily recommitment that does not mind starting over again and again. If you want to change your life, he whispers, make your bed, keep silence when you can, and offer your irritations as incense.
St. Catherine of Siena, ever the firebrand, would not let us rest there. She would remind us that our resolutions are not private hobbies. To be resolved toward God is to be resolved for the good of the world. “Be who God meant you to be,” she said, “and you will set the world on fire.” She would shake us awake from the small dream of self-optimization and point to the larger dream of communion, mission, service, and love that risks itself for others. Our souls, she would insist, are not gyms but embers made to catch fire in the furnace of grace.
And St. Thérèse, the little one, would laugh at all our striving and tell us to trust more and measure less. She knew failure well. Her resolutions fell apart as quickly as ours. But she carried on with humility and joy, certain that God loved her not for her progress but for her openness. She teaches us that success in the spiritual life is not perfection but perseverance born of trust. If we can fall and rise still believing in mercy, that is victory enough.
So what, finally, is a Catholic vision of resolution? It is not self-mastery but self-surrender. It is the willingness to cooperate with grace through a thousand tiny decisions. It is bending our proud wills toward divine mercy until virtue becomes the easy rhythm of love. A resolution ordered toward God humbles the self instead of inflating it. It whispers rather than shouts. It begins again quietly on Thursday morning when no one is watching.
Maybe that is the point of New Year’s resolve after all: not to invent a new self but to let the real self emerge through the steady work of love. Every resolution worth keeping belongs not to January but to eternity, which is always beginning again. And if we find ourselves once more at the end of the month the same flawed, funny, hopeful creatures we were before, that is all right. God delights in beginnings more than in results.
So then, take heart. Resolve to rise, to pray, to forgive, to laugh, to keep going. Sweep the floor. Eat the chocolate. Try again. And let every small effort of your trembling will become a confession of faith that grace is still at work, and that the long road home can begin any day you choose to take the next step.
