Resolve to become more like Him in the new year

As this calendar year of 2017 ends and we enter into the beautiful Christmas Season, again our minds and hearts renewed by our Advent prayers, good works and acts of self-denial, are filled with that joy and peace only Our Lord Jesus can and does give to each of us.
 
We recall with humble and grateful humility what His first coming to the world has already done and as we approach a new calendar year on January 1st, that same sentiment fills us with holy hope as we wait on His second coming just as He promised. While our new year of grace and favor from the Lord began on the First Sunday of Advent, our calendar New Year opens to us another opportunity to allow the Lord to further penetrate the lives of others through us.
 
One way that this can happen is for each of us to continue and even increase what we have been doing during Advent to prepare ourselves for the Lord. Frequent and perhaps daily Mass, continuing our works of charity and mercy to those who are in need, and to continue some form of real self-denial, all done for the same love and honor of God and carried over into the New Year will have a transforming effect not just on us but on those with whom we live and work and go to school. 
 
In essence, it is our real and sincere desire and will to increase the habit of doing what is good which virtue is, and that makes a lasting difference on us, on our society and culture, and on the world. If we commit ourselves to this as our New Year’s resolution then we have understood both Advent and Christmas.
 
We all have made those resolutions with the best of intentions and for a variety of reasons have not kept them. As a new calendar year approaches, I would like to suggest that we make just one resolution which we can keep if we choose and that is to pray that the Lord Jesus helps us to be more like Him each day no matter our circumstances. He will never disappoint us and the more we are like Him, the more virtuous we will be.
 
May you, and all whom you love, have a most Blessed and Happy New Year!