Can Lent fix my broken New Year's resolutions?

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SISTER MAXINE: I am Sister Maxine here with a familiar face, or should I say a familiar voice, on the pod cast, Sister Shannon Schrein. It’s great to see you again, Shannon.

SISTER SHANNON: It’s nice to see you, too, Max. I always enjoy our sessions.

SISTER MAXINE: So our first question comes in from Maria in San Antonio, and Maria writes: “I already broke my New Year’s resolutions, which is depressing, but maybe Lent will be better. Can you suggest things I might do to stick to the decisions I have made to change some things in my life?”

SISTER SHANNON: I think you have joined the majority of us who make a resolution for January the 1st and perhaps by January the 2nd have already lost sight of its importance in our lives.

SISTER MAXINE: So Maria, you are totally not alone. Not saying too much personal here but definitely not alone from my side of things. (laughter)

SISTER SHANNON:  That’s right. I guess it’s important for us, Maxine, to talk a little bit about the motivation for a New Year’s resolution and the motivation for a Lenten practice. It is really kind of two different things, but they have the same goal, I think, of transforming our self and making us better.

SISTER MAXINE: Well, because they are two different things, it may give us a different motivation to reach toward that goal.

SISTER SHANNON: That’s right.

SISTER MAXINE: We know with Lent, February 6 to April 9, so there’s a little bit of time between now and when Lent begins, so this is a good time. Maybe we can talk about some ideas for Maria as she begins.

SISTER SHANNON: The motivation piece that you mentioned, I think is really an important part of why we make the decision to make a New Year’s resolution or engage in a Lenten practice. If your New Year’s resolution is to exercise more, the motivation is most likely so that you feel better, that you have more energy, so that you can be more productive at work. If your motivation is to lose some weight, that’s another reason. I think we shift in our mindset when we begin to think about practices for Lent. Most often we do that in order to deepen our spiritual selves, not just our physical self.

SISTER MAXINE: And that’s not saying those New Year’s resolutions aren’t good.

SISTER SHANNON: Oh, of course not.

SISTER MAXINE: And they might come out of—like from Lent, when you say that deepening of our spiritual self—and that might be the bridge, even for Maria. Maybe it’s starting there that will help her achieve the other things that she desires for herself, but to have that spiritual center. She may find through her Lenten practices—we talk about almsgiving, fasting and prayer—that it also gives her a different perspective on what’s important to her.

SISTER SHANNON: When we were young, we were encouraged in our Lenten practices to give things up. In order I think, really, to be in solidarity with the poor, to be in solidarity with those who suffer, to be in solidarity with the sufferings of Christ throughout the season of Lent, so we would give up chocolate. I remember my dad not drinking during Lent or giving up cigarette smoking. In a sense, there was something that helped us on a personal level, but it was really about the discipline of practicing something that took some sacrifice on our part and then caused us, I hope, to reflect on why we were doing it.

SISTER MAXINE:  Those external things are okay as a starting point, but it sounds like, for Maria, maybe one of things she could start with on fasting, is to lighten up on herself a little bit. Sometimes it’s a turn on that.

SISTER SHANNON: I think that the motivation today should be one that really drives us toward deepening our relationship with our God. Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are all wonderful ways to do that. If we reduce what we’re eating and we’re thinking about those that have less and we’re desiring to make it possible for others to have a better life. If we’re spending a little more time in reflective prayer in the mornings, those kinds of things really serve to deepen our relationship with our God.

SISTER MAXINE: And to think about that being the starting point, really, whether it’s a New Year’s resolution—we can bring our spirituality to that—or whether it’s Lent, to have that be the starting point that can help guide us.

SISTER SHANNON: I don’t know if this was part of your experience, but when we were children, we would receive from our teachers in Catholic school a little box. They called it a “Mite Box.” It came from the Propagation of the Faith. We would save our money in those boxes and then that money would go to the Propagation of the Faith, particularly to missionaries. It was that sense of giving of what you had. So if your allowance was a dime, and you chose once a week to put a nickel in there, that was a big deal when you brought that Mite Box in. Now some kids, their mom and dad would put 5 bucks in right from the start and they didn’t have to sacrifice anything. But my experience was, I’d take those couple of pennies and I would put them in. That was a great sense of accomplishment to me because I had given of what I had, of what was a part of my life, and I had done it in order to help somebody else. Those sort of acts of kindness really are an important motivation in our Lenten practice.

SISTER MAXINE: Was that an echo of the widow’s mite?

SISTER SHANNON: It might have been. I never put those two together, but you give what you can and your sacrifice. Sacrifice sometimes has a negative connotation—I’m going to give this up or I’m not going to eat candy. But I think when sacrifice attaches to it a value for someone else—so I am sharing some of my pennies because I know that these children in this mission land need something—then I have a deeper understanding of my care for the world, a broader sense of my part in community overall.

SISTER MAXINE: It raises a good point too: when you can do something that helps other people, I think it also raises your awareness of what it is that you have, regardless if you think it’s a lot or it’s not a lot. In scripture, at one point, God is saying to the people, “What I want is a sacrifice of gratitude.” To let that sense of giving during Lent, or whenever time, also enhance our gratitude.

SISTER SHANNON: Indeed. Maria, as you think about your Lenten practices, it’ll be really important for you to consider those positive actions that bring a sense of deepening of your relationship with God to you, while at the same time demonstrating your role in community, in the Christian family, and reaching out to others. So maybe it’s your choice in the morning to greet people kindly. It’s your choice to respond in a positive way or to reach out to someone that you recognize as more of a loner at work or doesn’t seem to have any friends. There are all kinds of ways, I believe, that we can really practice that kind of reaching out that does, for us, become a discipline, because it would be easy to ignore, but takes that extra effort to reach out to someone.

SISTER MAXINE: And to cultivate that so that it becomes a way of life. It’s not just then about Lent. You raise a good point, Shannon, is that Maria thinks, from the sound of it, that she has already failed the New Year’s resolutions. The comments about kindness—you don’t have to do something that’s earth shattering in your life. Sometimes it is the more simple and more thoughtful things that have the most powerful effect on us.

SISTER SHANNON: They really do. And it’s important to start again each day. When we were younger, I think the Church talked about that in terms of the development of virtue and habits. You form virtuous habits so that you become a person who is kind, a person who is grateful, a person who is prayerful, all of those things. This is helping you to develop a habit of kindness toward others or a habit of prayer or a habit of fasting or almsgiving. It’s not just during those six weeks of Lent that God calls us to engage in these practices, but to make those kinds of practices a habit for our lives.

SISTER MAXINE: So then it becomes a disposition. It becomes our first response. We don’t have to think, “Okay, now is the moment for kindness.” (laughter)

SISTER SHANNON: “I was good to that person, so I am done for the week.”

SISTER MAXINE: “I am done.” (laughter) The old checklist. (laughter) It’s a challenge because, first of all, you have to remember to do these things. We go along in life, I think, so many times and it’s almost like there is so much coming at us, it’s almost like we become little robots. So these practices are also to wake us up to ourselves and in doing so, the relationship with God.

SISTER SHANNON: I agree. I think, Maria, that you have a desire to be a better person and I believe you have a desire to be a better Christian, based on what you’ve written to us, and so I would just encourage you to choose those disciplines, if you will, of prayer, fasting and almsgiving that bring joy to others, that bring joy to you and comfort, and help you to see the contributions that you make in the day to day.

SISTER MAXINE: When you say “joy to ourselves and to others,” I think there is something in there, too, for Maria to think about in terms of, you feel like you didn’t make it past the New Year’s resolutions, but this might be a call to be more forgiving with yourself and to say, “Maybe that wasn’t the most life-giving choice.” Did you really feel it in your heart? Because there is nothing wrong with changing a direction if we realize that is not where our heart is really calling us to.

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This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.