Renewal and obsession

IT’S again New Year! Don’t you find it strange, even funny, that what’s supposed to be new is feeling like it’s an old, stale thing repeated and repeated so many times, “ad nauseam”, in an almost mindless routine every year?

Yes, that’s what is likely to happen if we are not careful. We can harden in our ways, get trapped in our complacency, imprisoned in our world of ideas, really quite dead although we can manage to look alive, and even lively.

Yes, human as we are, we are quite capable of these things. We are good in hiding and disguising what really is inside us. We can go formal, without the substance, often not knowing that this is very toxic to our soul.

Thus, we can drown ourselves in sounds, sights and spirits, all meant to arouse the senses while putting the soul to sleep.

We can go through the routine of resolution-making, if only to pacify for a while our spiritual side that cannot be totally shut off in our life.

But the true spirit of the New Year is somewhere else. It is in the recognition that we in this life will always need a constant renewal, that life-long process of having to begin and begin again.

It’s the recognition that first of all is always a fruit of God’s grace and corresponded to very generously by us. It’s recognition that the renewal expected is far from being merely physical or material. It has to be spiritual.

Thus, we need to understand the phenomenon called inertia that often is the
main culprit that spoils our efforts to renew ourselves genuinely.

In the physical world, inertia is easily observable. It means there should be no variation in things. What is still should remain still. What is moving should remain moving. This, of course, cannot and should not be applied to our life.

But in our spiritual life, things appear to be always moving. What would constitute inertia is when that motion goes on its own, detached from God who actually shows the way, sets the pace and makes everything really new.

This is what takes place is an obsession. It’s a certain repetition of acts driven by a certain blindness, narrow-mindedness, rigidity, self-righteousness, bitter zeal, self-indulgence, attachments, etc.

It differs essentially from virtue which also involves some repetition of acts, because a virtue is never blind, rigid, and all that. Virtue first of all is always reasonable, and also imbued with charity, because it starts and ends with God.

Not so with obsession. While it can spur a person to constant motion, it’s a motion that goes nowhere except to one’s harm and perdition. It’s vicious, addictive and enslaving.

Virtue builds a person up. It perfects him, much in the way expressed one time by St. Peter in his second letter:

“Strive diligently to supply your faith with virtue, your virtue with knowledge, your knowledge with self-control, your self-control with patience, your patience with piety, your piety with fraternal love, your fraternal love with charity.” (1,5-7)

This is what we have to understand very well if we want to capture the true spirit of the New Year. Renewal is mainly spiritual, attached always to the power of God and corresponded to with all our might.

Otherwise, we will just drift to some obsession, now made more possible because of the many subtle and not-so-subtle temptations we are having these days.

Happy New Year to all, and good luck!