New years resolutions are always a bit of a waste of time for me. I start out with all sorts of good intentions about what I will eat, how I will keep fit and when I will get all the little tasks that I have planned for the future completed. The truth is that I usually fall at the first hurdle. Someone offers me a cream cake and I cannot resist it, the regime at the gym gets quickly sidelined for something less healthy and as for those little tasks I planned, they will just have to wait for another day! There is a comfort that comes however from knowing that I am not the only one. Oscar Wilde said “I can resist everything except temptation”. I’m sure it’s something we could all say at one time or another.

Jesus was different.

As we think about His life and ministry during the season of Epiphany we remember how He was able to resist every sort of temptation. It wasn’t just the trivial but the substantial. There was no way on earth that He would be distracted from his task of bringing God’s love to bear in the hearts and lives of men, women and children everywhere for all time and eternity. We can all look forward because of Him. He reveals the possibility of what we can become with God’s help and with His Spirit to guide us. There is nothing we can do to change the past and in our own strength alone we are weak and are easily led off in the wrong direction but with Him we have every hope of success for the future. At Moncreiff we all believe that His love can be known through what we do and say. We minister to one another and to our community in His name. Twentieth century Jesuit Alfred Delp wrote “If through one man’s life there is a little more love and kindness, a little more light and truth in the world, then he will not have lived in vain”.