Another Year for Resolutions - Another Year to Discover God's Will!

It's amazing how every New Year brings with it another year of resolutions!  Another year is set to re-discover and reclaim for ourselves those things we desire.  Everyone in their own way desire to (re)discover the purpose of their life!  

I recently came across a beautiful quote from Pope Benedict XVI: 

"Each of us is WILLED, each of us is LOVED, each of us is NECESSARY!" 

If we are willed, loved, and necessary, then we need to ask why did God's will us? Why are we necessary?  I believe the New Year's resolution is touching a deep desire to understand that God created us out of His will and His love, and that we are necessary!  It is a time to discover God's plan for us!

This past fall, I was blessed to study JPII's "Theology of the Body."  The book is made up of a collection of 129 lectures he gave over Wednesday audiences from Sept. 1979 to Nov. 1984. He addressed the understanding of the human person, in light of human sexuality.  In reading a few lectures for class, I discovered a theme that resounds in my life of discovering God's plan for me!  Pointing to a necessary New Year's resolution. 

JPII presented the following;

In the beginning...
A. God's plan involved creating man and woman for "Himself"
B. Man/Woman was given free will
C. It was in free will man and woman discovers the beauty of "gift of self" to the other (self-gift)

But something happened! In Original sin, the human condition was disordered.  Now enters Concupiscence (a big theological term describing the disorder found in man and woman's will).  JPII writes, "by violating the dimension of the mutual gift of the man and the woman, concupiscence also casts doubt on the fact that each of them is willed by the Creator "for himself." (General Audience 32.5)

The result follows!
C'. Man/Woman fails in self-gift (through failure of self-mastery and putting self over the other)
B'. Man/Woman questions his/her free-will along with losing their free will through slavery to sin.
A'. Man/Woman questions God's plan or even worse, numbs themselves to the idea that there is no purpose/plan for their lives.

Note the reversal found from the original plan for Man and Woman.

After discovering this fact, I recalled all the times I questioned my own vocation.  Felt lost without purpose or control of my life!  It was the time that I failed to give myself completely over to others as a self-gift, when I was self centered, it was when I became enslaved to sin, which followed with questioning God's plan in my life!    It's only when I made a resolve to make myself a self-gift to others, that I freed myself through prayer and Sacraments (Reconciliation and Eucharist), and rediscovered God's plan for myself and the ability to surrender myself to others.

The New Year's is upon us!  A new year to reclaim God's plan, our free will, and make ourselves a self gift!  Through the Grace of Christ, through the Sacrament of reconciliation and the Eucharist, we have the ability of rediscover the fact: 

"Each of us is WILLED, Each of us is LOVED, Each of us is NECESSARY!"

God does have a plan for us!