Each New Year arrives with a familiar ritual. Aspirations are announced, resolutions are drafted, and optimism briefly reigns. Yet by February—or let’s face it, mid-January—most of those intentions have quietly dissolved, often accompanied by a shrug and a joke about how no one really keeps resolutions anyway.
I fall into this category of over-promising myself some wonderful new habit or dropping one I’m not a fan of, and I always gave the same excuse. But last year was different, last year I told myself that no matter how hard it was, I was going to find this pattern troubling and do something about it. I’ll tell you later in this article exactly what I gave up and what happened as a result.
The Christian life is not oriented toward vague optimism or casual self-improvement. It is ordered toward conversion—deliberate, sustained, and often uncomfortable conversion. The turning of the calendar is therefore not merely symbolic. It presents a moment of decision. A year will shape us whether we choose to engage it or not. The question is whether we will approach it intentionally or drift through it passively.
To be “locked in” for 2026 is not about enthusiasm or novelty. It is about seriousness. It is about treating time as morally significant and the spiritual life as something that demands thought, discipline, and resolve.
The Illusion of Effortless Change
One reason New Year’s resolutions so often fail is that they are usually built on unrealistic assumptions. We imagine change will feel empowering, affirming, and socially reinforced. In reality, meaningful change tends to be inconvenient. It disrupts routines, limits options, and exposes how dependent we have become on comfort.
Over the past year, I learned this firsthand.
I committed to eliminating fast food entirely. No drive-throughs, no exceptions, no “just this once” rationalizations. In a culture structured around convenience and impulse, this proved far more difficult than expected. Every missed limited-time special and every late-night hunger pang became a small confrontation with habit and desire.
At the same time, I chose to abstain from alcohol for a full year—not because alcohol is immoral, but because discipline is formative. With these two in mind, I wanted to lose “25 in ‘25”—and I did!
None of these commitments were dramatic. They were, however, clarifying. They revealed how often modern life conditioned me to avoid discomfort and how easily indulgence masquerades as necessity. More importantly, they demonstrated that habits are not morally neutral. They shape attention, priorities, and ultimately the soul.
The Danger of Drift
The modern world excels at encouraging drift. Drift into distraction. Drift into moral ambiguity. Drift into a faith that retains Catholic language but loses Catholic rigor.
This is especially dangerous for Catholics, because Catholicism does not function well when approached casually. The Faith presumes effort. Scripture repeatedly compares the Christian life to athletic discipline, combat, and endurance—not leisure or spontaneity. The saints did not arrive at holiness accidentally. They chose it repeatedly, often against inclination and circumstance.
Yet many Catholics enter a new year assuming spiritual growth will occur organically. Prayer will deepen. Sin will lessen. Discipline will emerge. All without intentional planning or sacrifice. This assumption is mistaken. Growth requires direction. Without it, we do not remain spiritually stationary; we regress.
To be “locked in” for 2026 means rejecting a passive approach to faith and embracing intentional reflection. It requires asking questions that resist sentimentality and demand honesty.
What habits quietly undermine prayer and attention to God?
Where does convenience routinely override discipline?
What occupies more mental space than the things of God?
If an observer evaluated your daily routines, would they conclude that the Faith truly governs your priorities?
These questions are not exercises in scrupulosity. They are acts of realism. Catholics are not called to constant self-accusation, but neither are they permitted the luxury of unexamined living.
Discipline, properly understood, is not repression. It is ordered love—the choice to prioritize what is truly good over what is merely pleasant.
Time as Moral Territory
The coming year is not empty space. It is moral territory.
Every year forms us in some direction. The only question is whether that formation will be intentional or accidental. To approach 2026 deliberately is to recognize that modest, concrete commitments are often more transformative than sweeping but vague resolutions.
This does not require ten simultaneous changes or heroic gestures. It requires one serious commitment—chosen carefully, sustained faithfully, and evaluated honestly.
For some, this may involve fasting from unnecessary consumption, whether of food, media, or spending. For others, it may mean a period of sobriety, a structured prayer rule, or disciplined study of the Catechism. Still others may benefit from intentional silence, scheduled fasting, or stricter boundaries around digital distraction. The particular discipline matters less than the posture behind it: a conscious refusal to drift.
Catholics live amid extraordinary spiritual abundance. The sacraments, the liturgy, the moral clarity of Church teaching, and the wisdom of centuries are readily available. Yet abundance can breed complacency. We delay change because tomorrow feels guaranteed. Grace, misunderstood, becomes an excuse for postponement rather than a summons to action.
Grace still requires action. We must choose freely and intentionally to cooperate with it. The Church does not call the faithful to comfort, but to sanctity. Sanctity, by its nature, requires sacrifice, clarity, and perseverance. The saints were not spiritual extremists. They were focused. They understood that holiness is not the product of enthusiasm but of fidelity.
To be “locked in” does not mean courting exhaustion or measuring holiness by hardship alone. It means cultivating clarity. When unnecessary comforts are restrained, attention sharpens. When indulgence is limited, priorities become visible.
Over the past year, I saw that discipline did not diminish my joy; it purified it. Removing certain options simplified decisions and freed mental space. Constraint, paradoxically, proved liberating. This is a truth the modern world resists but Catholic tradition understands well: freedom is not the absence of limits, but the presence of order.
As 2026 approaches, Catholics should resist the temptation to ask what they feel like changing. A better question is what kind of Catholic they are willing to become. Choose one commitment that requires thought and sacrifice. One that cannot be sustained without prayer and intentionality. Then pursue it—not flawlessly, but faithfully. The Church does not need more casual adherents. It needs Catholics who are attentive, disciplined, and willing to live deliberately in a distracted age.
This year, be locked in.
Not because it is easy.
But because it is necessary.
Photo by Roven Images on Unsplash
