Through Prayer, Change Everything around You This Year

By Mary Beth Bonacci
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 1/18/07)

I’m starting to forget what I’ve already told you in these columns. My first column of the year is going to be about New Year’s resolutions, but I started to write it and thought, “This feels familiar.” So I went back to the column I wrote last January, which is easily accessible at www.reallove.net. Sure enough, it was about New Year’s resolutions. I’m prepared to take it one step further this time.
Last year I wrote about our tendency to make exterior or “posterior” resolutions. We want to lose weight, to get in shape, to stop smoking, to eat more vegetables. I understand that. I resolve to lose the same five pounds every year. I do manage to lose them by June. Then they start creeping on again in November. By Jan. 1 we repeat the cycle. It occurred to me last year, perhaps for the first time, that my body is going to die and rot some day. So, perhaps at resolution time, I should pay a little more attention to the interior part of me that’s going to last long past the demise of the exterior.
This year, oddly, I notice a lot more people making “interior” resolutions. Not, I’m sure, because of last year’s article. I can’t even remember myself what I wrote a year ago. I’m sure they don’t either. They’re just good people wanting to do the right thing. So they’re going to do more good deeds. They’re going to act in a more loving way, give away more money, do more spiritual reading. In short, they’re going to do things that make them better people.
That’s great. It already puts them light years ahead of me and my “lose five pounds” mentality. Yet I’m going to sit here in my armchair and challenge them to tweak their already-impressive thinking ever so slightly.
Thanks to American industrialism and the Puritan work ethic and all of that, we live in a very activity-based society. There’s nothing wrong with that. After all, it’s activity that gets things done. Thinking about feeding the poor doesn’t get any food into their bellies. We need to act.
All of those good actions, however, are still exterior. Not in the sense of dealing with the superficialities of our exterior bodies, but because they deal with changing the world around us, which is a good thing. But when we talk about “becoming better people,” in the deepest sense of the word, we can’t get there on our own. We can’t act our way into it.
“Becoming a better person” means being more thoroughly infused by love — love of God, love of neighbor, and a well-ordered love of self. That’s the trickiest one. Love, or “charity” as it’s often called, is one of the theological virtues. The theological virtues are called that because we can’t infuse them in ourselves. They come from God, from the Holy Spirit acting within us.
There’s only one way to do that — consistent, fervent prayer. God, upon our invitation and with our cooperation, changes us from the inside out.
So many people think that they’re going to study theology or read spiritual works. Nothing wrong with either of those — I have a master’s degree in theology and I’m a big fan of spiritual reading. But we can’t mistake those alone for actually growing in holiness. Learning and reading only enhance our holiness to the extent that they draw us into prayer.
Look at it this way — if you want to draw closer to someone, to enhance your relationship, you do that through spending time with him. You wouldn’t say, “I want to get closer to my husband, so I’m going to read a lot about him. I won’t actually talk to him, but I’ll memorize a lot of stories about his childhood.” The childhood stories would help you get to know him better, but they would only enhance the relationship if there were an actual relationship to enhance.
Good works are an indispensable part of being a Christian. We’re called to love one another, and we show that love in action. But if we’re looking to get closer to God, that happens only one way — through communicating with Him in prayer. It is in prayer that He comes to us, changes our hearts and infuses us with His love.
When He infuses us with His love, we’re impelled to go out and share that love in our actions. Now our actions take on a different character. It’s not just us, it is His Holy Spirit working in and through us. And that changes everything.
Don’t settle for changing the exterior — whether it’s the world around you or your personal exterior. Change everything in 2007. Do it through prayer.

Bonacci is a frequent lecturer on chastity.

Copyright (c) 2007 by Arlington Catholic Herald