Make Each Day of the New Year a Conversion Story
By Jerome Placido

During the Holiday Season there’s always so much to eat. Turkey, chicken, pies, cookies, cakes, and tamales, are plentiful. Sometimes we become overwhelmed with the variety of food that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs.

With the New Year, we all begin to make of our New Years Resolution. Like our holiday meals, sometimes our imaginations are larger than our will for those resolutions, and sometimes we become a little over zealous.

I'm sure you've heard the term, "baby steps." Rather than taking one large leap forward only to fall backwards (which 8 times out of 10 will happen), let's take baby steps towards our spiritual resolutions. You can't learn to walk before learning to crawl. Look at it this way, a small step forward is still a step forward.

This is not to say that it is completely impossible to provide a complete 180° from our old selves. Through the graces of God anything is possible, even Jesus say's that if we have the "faith as a grain of mustard seed" (Matt 17:19) we are able to move even mountains. The feelings we get from retreats show conversions, true. But a few weeks if not days, we may slowly start to backslide into our old selves.

Sometimes we'll hear someone's "conversion story." That one moment in someone's life that completely changed and converted them. For a point in my life, I tried to pinpoint exactly that conversion story so that I may share it. I struggled and struggled to find it, almost to a point where I was tempted to make one up!

Finally in conversations that I had with close friends I came to realize that every day is a new conversion story waiting to happen.

Conversion doesn't just happen once in our life and then we're done, even the most the Saints recognized this. Pope St. Leo the Great said "Virtue is nothing without the trial of temptation, for there is no conflict without an enemy, no victory without strife." Each day comes with it's own trial or as Pope St. Leo the Great said, "conflict," and with each "victory" comes a new conversion.

We should come to realize conversion happens EVERY DAY if we allow it. If we are to think otherwise, we are to say then that there is no longer a need for change within ourselves, and that my brothers and sisters is a dangerous place to be. I would even argue that the only day that I am fully converted is the day I have joined God in his kingdom.

So with this New Year, lets resolve to be open to our daily conversions. Fr. Fred sent me a text message today that reads "New year is God's way of saying 'Once more time… Live life… Make a difference… Touch one heart… Encourage one mind… and inspire one soul.' Happy New Year."

 Happy New Year and God Bless, Brothers and Sisters.