“Don’t despair over your shortcomings. Start over each day. You make spiritual progress by beginning again and again.” — St. Francis de Sales

So why is it that January always seems to be about beginnings, or perhaps, more accurately, the beginning again and again? Even if it is a cultural expectation for us to make New Year resolutions and promises that we cannot figure out how to keep, it is an important spiritual practice to take time to reflect and renew our priestly hearts.

A gentle spiritual patron I met during my pastorate, St. Francis de Sales, had a way of writing to help his people understand how to live a devout life according to their state of life. Unexpectedly, everything changed in my understanding of St. Francis de Sales when I discovered the 20,000-plus personalized letters that he wrote to everyday people who needed to understand how to be loved and to love Jesus. I think his letters are so much better than his treatises with coming to terms with new beginnings.

So, are you looking for help to start your new year, your new beginning again? Well, allow me to offer you a few lessons I have learned from my January saint, my six sisters and my seminarians to help strengthen your resolve and your new resolutions.

St. Francis de Sales

Francis was born in 1567, during a time of turmoil in a divided Church and nation. After he was ordained bishop in 1602 he began to organize the formation of his clergy, insisting that learning was the eighth sacrament for a priest. So he concerned himself with the reform of monasteries and the catechesis of the young. He spent hours in the confessional, engaged in dialogue with the Calvinists, with whom he struggled, and loved to preach Advent and Lenten homilies.

Francis struggled with scrupulosity, depression and anger, only finding freedom and management through prayer and silence in an empty church. He knew of his weaknesses, so much so that he allowed them to shape to whom he reached out, especially the extremely poor, the widowed, the deaf and those who struggled with the same emotional issues he knew all too well. One widow, Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot, Baroness of Chantal (St. Jane), insisted that he become her spiritual director, which led them to create the order of the Sisters of the Visitation of Holy Mary. He undertook, oftentimes, the role of a spiritual director through powerful letter writing, not only with priests and vowed religious, but tenderly with the burdened and busy laity, so they could know their worth and learn how to pray unceasingly.

So what does all this have to do with resolutions? My brothers, who of us does not know how the traps and failings of our past, our idiosyncrasies, our weaknesses and same-old-same-old sins can paralyze us from making decisions that need to be made? Doesn’t this new year beg us to turn to the life-changing ways of St. Francis de Sales?

• Be committed to some aspect of reform going on within the presbyterate, whether through silent prayer in an empty church or preparing for your homilies by refusing to simply rehash the old Cycle C versions you did three years ago or “borrowed” from someone else you heard online. Insist that they come from your unceasing intimacy with the one in whom you are configured!
• Dare to put something down in your own handwriting (yes, “your” handwriting, regardless of how illegible it may be … let it be yours). Let your pen and heart lead someone in a profound, spiritual and life-giving way. Who knows, maybe in 500 years we will be sharing his truths through your handwriting.
• Encourage the vocation of children and widows and those with physical limitations or sensory challenges so they never think they are too little, too broken or too incapable of making a difference or beginning again and again.
• Speaking of beginning again and again, what about “that thing” you put away to deal with when you get the time? Let it be the time now! Pray St. Ignatius’ Suscipe and repeat after St. Faustina: “Jesus, I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you.” And ask yourself if you really do. Wow, what a happy New Year!

My Sisters

OK, OK, OK, for those who know me, you may have heard me mention now and then that I have six sisters, three older and three younger. Contrary to what most think, I was not spoiled rotten growing up … come on, with one bathroom and four bedrooms for the nine of us to live within 1,400 square feet. And why should they have spoiled me rotten when I might have had a few moments when they may have thought I teased and tormented them too much?

Gratefully, something called maturity and respect and ordained priesthood came along, which allowed me to realize their tremendous beauty and dignity — and them to find mercy for me. Never could a brother become a priest better than through their lives and love. Each one allowed — no, they invited and wanted — me to be a part of every aspect of their life. What better way to be shaped at the beginning of priestly formation than being with them through their marriages and mishaps, their births and businesses, their divorce, diseases and even death?

They taught me to seek healing in relationships and dysfunctions. They showed me there is always a way to find some moment to pray and to hope in Jesus, even if it means you have to lock yourself in the only bathroom or in the car parked in the garage — even if you don’t have the words or strength to tell your precious 11-year-old they have cancer, or that grandpa is dying. My sisters have stood by me and lifted me even when they are forced to watch their bratty brother be adored and cherished by parishioners who don’t know what they know.

So what does all this have to do with resolutions? My brothers, the truth is we all come from backgrounds with baggage and blessings, with family members we can’t live without or don’t always know how to live with anymore. If things need fixing, then ask someone to help you. If things are too far in the past that you can’t seem to figure out a way to work through forgiveness, seek to be reconciled within your memories and within your heart through the wounds of Jesus. We are called “fathers” for all the reasons attached to it. Know that he desires to make you a good father.

• If you have difficulty remembering good moments or tender memories of your family, ask Jesus to embrace you with his Holy Family. Browse through old photos of your family and remember when they were just children, and it wasn’t always their fault … or yours.
• If you are blessed with nieces and nephews, don’t let someone else be their uncle or influence, or allow a card with money to stand for your relationship. Ask for something more. Even if time has slipped by, go back to St. Francis de Sales’ gift of writing letters. Remind yourself and tell them how you first fell in love with the idea of becoming a priest. Recount all the burials and baptisms, weddings and worries you endured because he loves you.
• Studies show that a parent’s biggest fear is that they weren’t “enough” of what their child needed, or they somehow failed as a father or mother. We, too, can feel this way. Resolve this January to turn from the enemy’s whispers and name your grace!

Seminarians and Sons 

One of the hardest moments of my life of discernment was when I was asked to leave my parish life as the pastor of St. Francis de Sales Church, the place where my parents and six sisters lived within 20 minutes of me. How could I even want to leave the parish where my nieces and nephews went to school, participated in Parish School of Religion, were baptized and married, where I buried my father and sister and had standing-room-only support and love? What could I possibly offer as the spiritual director at Saint Mary Seminary? Just because St. Francis de Sales is the patron of spiritual directors … oh, uhm, forget that last part! I ran to all my usual supporters, my priest friends, my spiritual director, my sisters and their kids, my mom and even my dad at his grave, hoping all of them would say what they said in the past: “Just stay where you are. There’s so much grace. Why would you leave?” Nope, not this time. They all said, “It’s time.”

So what does all this have to do with resolutions? In the past four years of living at the seminary, I found it had nothing to do with working through my old seminary issues (they weren’t as bad as I thought). It had nothing to do with being some great spiritual influence upon these impressionable souls. Instead, it had everything to do with being re-formed through the lives of these men who dared to enter the seminary amid scandal and uncertainty of what a priest even is in today’s world. Their trust in freely sharing every aspect of their lives, their fears, their desires to be fully human and their longings to be intimate with the God who created them changed my priesthood. How could I ever remain the same as I was? How could I not want to begin again and again?

• Pray for, talk with, listen to the heart of a seminarian and remember who they need you to be. Don’t let your past notions of formation stop you from inviting someone to consider being a priest, a life the Church needs, and they may be needed, too.
• Did you know there is a whole new Program for Priestly Formation (PPF-6) that deals with every aspect of being human and spiritual? Check it out online and be amazed.

I pray this new year brings a renewal and restoration in our priesthood and in your life. So that you don’t think I only know how to quote St. Francis de Sales, I leave you with a New Year remembrance for your resolutions from St. Anthony of Padua: “We stumble. We stutter. We rise. We are lifted.” So let’s begin again and again!

FATHER G. DAVID BLINE, a priest of the Diocese of Cleveland, is spiritual director for Saint Mary Seminary and Graduate School of Theology in Wickliffe, Ohio.