Personal Goals
The topic of personal goals has been coming up lately, and it is a timely topic for the new year. I am recently engaged, and my fiancé and I, and a group of our friends, have been sharing with each other our goals and dreams, many times in the context of a 10-10-10 list as suggested by Mark Pierce and Paul Koopman in their book “E5 Leader: Success Tools to Maximize Your Potential and Develop Equilibrium, for Life.”
The recommended list includes 10 items that relate to personal monetary goals, 10 items related to personal non-monetary goals, and 10 goals that relate to others – monetary or not. This can be a good way to organize specific steps toward what I believe is a Christian’s ultimate personal goal, the umbrella over all goals, dreams, aspirations, and resolutions: to become a saint.
In a marriage-prep meeting, our priest relayed several times that our actions, reactions, and object of our married life is to love the Trinity as best we can. Loving the Trinity may be the first large umbrella under being a saint. We love through our relationships, jobs, families, interactions with others, actions, and prayer life. Aspects of these may be constantly changing; and as the saying goes, the only constant is change. I know that my life has a few guaranteed changes in 2017, and there will most likely be unexpected changes as well. These changes can help form us, and Cardinal John Henry Newman said that “to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.” (I translate this statement as “Bring on the changes! Be not afraid.”)
In addition to working toward our personal goals, keeping a strong prayer life, prioritizing our relationship with the Lord, and giving to others, we can also glorify God and journey on toward sainthood by doing “small things with great love” (Saint Teresa of Calcutta). “If we wish to be perfect, we have nothing more to do than to perform the ordinary duties of the day well” (Cardinal Newman). It's a challenge, but not an impossible one.
Becoming a saint sounds like a daunting and lofty goal. However, I need to keep in mind that being a saint is God’s desire for us, for he longs for each of us to be with him in heaven. I know that he will give us the graces and strength if we ask him. Each day is full of new opportunities to love and serve the Lord, and I hope you will join me in striving to live each day to the fullest to reach our ultimate goal of living forever with Christ.
