Loretto’s New Year Wishes and Resolutions
Posted on December 28, 2020, by Loretto Community
“Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matt.6:21)
“Drawing on our rich heritage and desiring to carry it forward into the future, we dedicate ourselves to Jesus Christ in his unique person and to the new creation for which he died and rose.”
“I Am the Way,” Loretto’s Constitutions, #12
Making any New Year’s resolutions? A year from now, you will wish you had started…
Laurie Santos, Yale psychology professor and host of “The Happiness Lab” podcast, once told “Newsweek Magazine,” “The one New Year’s resolution I would recommend is to take time to experience gratitude — that feeling of appreciating all the blessings in your life,” Gratitude, according to Santos, can be a jumping off point for more tangible lifestyle changes.
Said Santos, “There’s lots of research showing that experiencing more gratitude can boost happiness, but gratitude has also been shown to increase self-control — which can lead you to be more patient, save more money and even eat healthier. So experiencing more gratitude is like a meta-resolution — it allows you to feel happier but it also gives you the psychological strength you need to achieve other goals in the new year as well.”
“Newsweek” reported that 38 percent of Americans are preparing to take on at least one New Year’s resolution in 2021. Most (51 percent) are hoping to tidy up their finances, eat more healthfully (51 percent) or exercise more (50 percent). While some resolutions create long-term change, others fade quickly. One author suggested starting each day asking yourself, “’What can I do to make someone else’s life better?’ Then find ways throughout the day to answer that question with actions.”
Someone once said of Loretto, “You are a living, breathing force for good in the universe.” We strive to be so and would like to see everyone have that same aspiration. One resolution we could all make to move us in that right direction is to be “bread for others” — bread for the hungry; bread for those without clothing or shelter; bread for those without family or friends; bread for those who mourn; bread for those who are unemployed and under-employed; bread for those seeking justice and peace; bread for those suffering religious persecution; bread for all those in any kind of need. Every day, in whatever way “bread” is experienced in our lives. Give it away. What a wonderful world it would be if we could but be “bread for others.”
May you be blessed with a New Year filled with a bounty of blessings to share! May we all be bread for others!
