New Years Resolutions

A new year has begun. This is a time for reflecting on the year ahead and choosing how we are going to live differently this year. Though, I must confess, most of my resolutions for a new year go unfulfilled. The same thing happens when I return from my annual retreat. I want to do things differently and stay closer to God, but I end up falling into my same old patterns. My failure most of the time happens because I seek too dramatic of a change.

Personal change occurs in small steps, not big ones. It is possible to make a change in habits if they are incremental. Perhaps the first step in the change requires me to change my thinking, my view of myself and my world.

Each year, the Pope makes recommendations to us for change in his January 1 address. Of course, his view concerns the global community, but I place a few samples of it here to invite you to consider a small change in how you think about our world:

At the start of the New Year, then, I extend to every disciple of Christ and to every person of good will a warm invitation to expand their hearts to meet the needs of the poor and to take whatever practical steps are possible in order to help them. The truth of the axiom cannot be refuted: ‘to fight poverty is to build peace.’…

The recent economic crisis demonstrates how financial activity can at times be completely turned in on itself, lacking any long-term consideration of the common good. This lowering of the objectives of global finance to the very short-term reduces its capacity to function as a bridge between the present and the future, and as a stimulus to the creation of new opportunities for production and for work in the long term. Finance limited in this way to the short and very short term becomes dangerous for everyone, even for those who benefit when the markets perform well…

If the poor are to be given a priority, then there has to be enough room for an ethical approach to economics on the part of those active in the international market, an ethical approach to politics on the part of those in public office, and an ethical approach to participation capable of harnessing the contribution of civil society at local and international levels. International agencies themselves have come to recognize the value and advantage of economic initiatives taken by civil society and local administrations to promote the emancipation and social inclusion of those sectors of the population that often fall below the threshold of extreme poverty and yet are not easily reached by official aid…

Non-material forms of poverty exist which are not the direct and automatic consequence of material deprivation. For example, in advanced societies, there is evidence of marginalization, as well as affective, moral and spiritual poverty, seen in people whose interior lives are disoriented and who experience various forms of malaise despite their economic prosperity. On the one hand, I have in mind what is known as “moral underdevelopment”, and on the other hand the negative consequences of “super development.”…

Fighting poverty requires attentive consideration of the complex phenomenon of globalization. This is important from a methodological standpoint, because it suggests drawing upon the fruits of economic and sociological research into the many different aspects of poverty. Yet the reference to globalization should also alert us to the spiritual and moral implications of the question, urging us, in our dealings with the poor, to set out from the clear recognition that we all share in a single divine plan: we are called to form one family in which all – individuals, peoples and nations – model their behavior according to the principles of fraternity and responsibility.

Peace,
Fr. Damian
January 3-4 Bulletin