Happy New Year

So what's your New Year's resolution?

We celebrate lots of different new years in our world...the new calendar year, the new academic year...but this week we celebrate a new liturgical year with the beginning of Advent. Now, the beginning of Advent doesn't have any of the fun ritual flashiness as Lent...no ashes on foreheads, no "repent and turn away from the gospel", etc. Just some quiet and what one of my students referred to as "that Catholic menorah thing."

But, if this truly is a new year, and the point of Advent is preparation for Christmas, then importing the idea of "new year's resolutions" from the secular new year might be a good way of concretizing Advent in our culture today -- there's always a danger in creating spiritual checklists, but if despite many efforts we still think of Lent as a time to "give something up," we might re-claim Advent as a time to do something new, in preparation for the novum of the incarnation.

I'm trying to take this past sunday's Gospel instruction to "be vigilant at all times" as a jumpstart to making my meditation and morning prayer practice more regular in the next few weeks. What are you going to do?