Make up your minds

“Whoever hammers a lump of iron, first decides what he is going to make of it, a scythe, a sword, or an axe. Even so we ought to make up our minds what kind of virtue we want to forge or we labour in vain.”

-St. Anthony the Great from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 8,number 35.



I’m not generally in the habit of making new year’s resolutions. That we single out January 1 as the time to make new beginnings never quite made sense to me. What makes it more special than the preceding 364 days? That we single it out as the time to make new beginnings never quite made sense to me. At least that has been my internal argument against making new years resolutions in the past. But I recognize in myself that there is indeed a tendency to pick some arbitrary day in the future as a point of departure from some habit or sin or to start some new desired habit. I have often said to myself, “on Sunday I will renew my commitment to stop this or that sin habit. I’ll go to church and renew my commitment to follow the commands of Christ.. but until then…” Or even the changing of the day. “Okay, tomorrow morning when I get up I’m going to start over”. Or maybe on my Birthday, or this coming Lent. I find my flesh is very keen to convince me that tomorrow or the next is a good time to repent and start again. In the meantime it tries to convince me to indulge just a little more, to slumber just a bit longer. This is the deception of the enemy.

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews quotes to us from Psalm 95 (LXX 94) and exhorts us to consider today as the right time for repentance

7 Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says:“Today, if you will hear His voice,8 Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion,In the day of trial in the wilderness,9 Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me,And saw My works forty years.10 Therefore I was angry with that generation,And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart,And they have not known My ways.’11 So I swore in My wrath,‘They shall not enter My rest.’”

12 Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; 13 but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, 15 while it is said:

“Today, if you will hear His voice,Do not harden you hearts as in the rebellion.”

Hebrews 3:7-15

And again, St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthian church writes to them,

We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain.2 For He says:

“In an acceptable time I have heard you,And in the day of salvation I have helped you.”Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. 

I Corinthians 6:1-2

In a little book that has become a favorite of mine, The Way of the Ascetic, Tito Colliander, echoing the voice of the fathers and the Scriptures, begins the first chapter saying,

“If you wish to save your soul and win eternal life,arise from your lethargy, make the sign of the cross and say: In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Arise from your lethargy. He means by this that we should not delay for a moment. He goes on to say,

“Arise, then: but do so at once, without delay. Do not defer your purpose till ‘tonight’ or ‘tomorrow’ or ‘later, when I have finished what I have to do just now.’ The interval may be fatal.”

I think, though, that one reason we have this impulse to delay is because perhaps we have already failed so many times in the past to make good on our resolution. Perhaps for a while we do okay, but eventually we are worn down and give in. Consequently, though we know we need to make a change, we lack the courage. There is something about tomorrow that promises to impart to us the courage needed, so we set a date and hope that when it arrives we are really ready to make a go of it.

St. Anthony also suggests that one reason we don’t succeed is that we are perhaps a little haphazard in our approach. Change cannot happen except through particulars. The enemy loves for us to think in the abstract about the spiritual life.

Modern psychologist, self help gurus and preachers alike will tell you that it’s almost impossible to just stop doing some bad habit. Neuroscience teaches us that those patterns of behavior are not just moral but are,in fact, actually hardwired into our brains and that like well worn pathways through a forest it is easiest for us to follow those paths than to forge new ones. So to stop a bad habit you must replace the behavior and not just stop it. The fathers have known this all along.

So, St. Anthony tells us we must be deliberate about what virtues to cultivate and how. The desert fathers tell us that each vice has it’s counter virtue. If you are struggling with anger then work to cultivate mercy. If despair then cultivate thankfulness. The point is you must be deliberate.

As you remember St. Anthony today and celebrate his feast, consider your own life and listen to what he tells us. Talk to your spiritual father, priest, or confessor about your struggles and find out what virtue may be most beneficial to work on. Consider the triggers for that sinful habit you wish to defeat, and by God’s grace begin to attach those triggers instead to their counter-virtue. Be deliberate, and when you fall, don’t wait: get up, make the sign of the cross, and begin again.

O Christ, grant us victory over the enemy and grant that today we may enter your rest.