A 24-hour rule can be effective in our spiritual lives

Happy New Year! Well, not exactly the way we think about it. This is a new school year. For teachers and students, the beginning of a new school year provides an opportunity to start fresh. This is especially true if you have changed schools.
Students come into this school year with no bad grades for the year. You have a clean, fresh start. The chapter of your academic record from last year is now closed.  Now you begin writing the next chapter.  When I coached high school football, we were familiar with a witticism, “Don’t let your opponent beat you twice.” This witticism is communicating that once the game is over, it is over. Don’t spend the next week pouting about the mistakes you made or calls by the referees that you think were unfair. If we wallow in our defeat, we are likely to have a poor performance in the next game. In such a case, the opponent who we previously lost to caused us to lose a second game. 
Some coaches institute a 24-hour rule. They allow the player and other coaches to spend the 24 hours after a loss to consider the causes for the loss. They analyze what happened, but there is a huge difference between analyzing and wallowing.
Many of us don’t play high school, college or professional sports, but I think we can all take some lessons from those who do. If we have had a bad day or a bad stretch, can we look our failure squarely in the eyes and learn from it? Can we then make some changes to our approach?
This same approach is highly effective in our spiritual lives. I have often made attempts to spend more time in prayer and failed. I have made it to daily Mass every day for decently long stretches of time, and I have had stretches that I failed to follow through on my own intended course. Don’t give up! Please, let us remind ourselves that all of the great saints have fallen short at some point in their lives. But when they fell, they got up. A saint is one who finds a way to pick themselves up every time they fall.
Let’s embrace the opportunity to start new,  and let us analyze our shortcomings honestly and implement change in our lives.
— Pat Arensberg is the Director of the Office for Evangelization and Family Life. Email him at [email protected]