Anno Domini MMXXIV

Since it's only 1 January, it's not too late to do something like a Καθολικός διάκονος Year in Review. It's a good opportunity to blog about blogging. In August of last year, my blog marked its 18th year. However, for those long-time readers, both of you, you'll remember (because I've written about it here before), that this cyberspace actually began in July 2005. Its original title was "Scott Dodge for Nobody." I did not really begin "blogging" in earnest until August 2006.

Either way, that's a long time. One thing about 2023, which was an incredibly difficult year for me, is that I posted fewer times than any year since I really started doing this, even fewer than the five months in late 2006. Of course, back then, being new to the medium and blogging being its heyday, I wrote about anything and everything. While there is a lot of what I wrote that isn't very good (i.e., not terribly insightful nor particularly well-written), as a result of this endeavor I am a better writer. That's just one-way blogging has helped me grow personally.

I don't mind divulging that there were a number of times last year I felt kind of bad, for my own sake, that I wasn't taking the time to compose more posts. Heaven knows there are enough things going on in the Church, in the world, and in my own life to keep supplied with matters with which to grapple.

While I still make New Year's resolutions, I am deliberative and careful about committing. Frankly, I don't need something else to beat myself about. I do plan to post more here in the New Year. I plan to get back to posting reflections on the Sunday readings for those weeks I do not preach. Of course, I plan to continue posting my homilies. I'd like to do a Friday traditio or something similar. I also want to post commentaries on events that strike me as warranting it.

I do not plan to get back to those days when I was posting close to 400 times a year. Rather, I am aiming for around 8-12 posts per month, somewhere around 120 posts this year. We'll see how it goes. In the last several weeks of 2023, I spent a huge amount of time planning and preparing for 2024. I did this in the hope of focusing solely on those things I need to do and spreading things out more than I have in the past. Hopefully, that will provide me with time to do things I enjoy. Among those activities are reading and writing.

I remain amazed by the medium of blogging. Way back in 2005, as I composed my first several posts, I was utterly blown away that someone, anyone, sitting at a computer connected to the world wide web could write and then make it available to anyone else on the web. Like all such things, it is a mixed bag. If nothing else, I hope my blog is a responsible and positive cyberspace. I also hope there are those who find value in what I post.

It's funny now that I serve as Director of Deacons and Director of Diaconal Formation for my diocese that I don't write more about the diaconate. But we'll see how that goes this year too.

There are two books I'd like to share that have impacted my spirituality very positively. These are not big, complicated theological tomes. Rather, they are small, very accessible books on the basics of Ignatian spirituality. Both books are by Christopher Collins, SJ. The first book I gave to those who are in diaconate formation: Habits of Freedom: 5 Ignatian Tools for Clearing Your Mind and Resting Daily in the Lord. The second, the one I am reading right now, which has helped me rediscover the importance of making the Morning Offering each day, is Three Moments of the Day: Praying With the Heart of Jesus. The latter book was published in 2014 and the former in 2022.

Because I can't let myself rest too easily, I am also reading the fifth volume of Hans Urs Von Balthasar's Glory of the Lord, which is his engagement with modern Western metaphysics.

Anyway, Happy New Year. May 2024 be a wonderful year for you and for yours. As our reading from the sixth chapter of Numbers for this Solemnity puts it:

The LORD bless you and keep you!
The LORD let his face shine upon
you, and be gracious to you!
The LORD look upon you kindly and
give you peace!⁵