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Happy New Year! As we begin 2016, what is going on in your heart? Are you filled with hopes and dreams for this year? Are you anxious about family or personal difficulties? Do you expect your life to change dramatically this year, or just hold more of the same?
We all have plans, dreams, and expectations for 2016. We may also have New Year's resolutions. If you make resolutions, what are they about? Personal health? Relationships with others? Your relationship with God? Do you tend to keep your resolutions, or give up by mid-January?
 Resolutions can help us improve our lives. However, sometimes when we make great plans - even spiritual ones, like a goal to pray more regularly - we forget something essential. Whatever our plans may be, God also has dreams and goals for each of us this year. God will work through each of our lives in 2016 in ways we can't imagine now. It might be that you are hoping to find a new job, but God will have a reason for you to stay where you are. Or perhaps you plan on exercising more, but God's top priority will be for you to spend more time with family and friends.
God has a way of turning our plans upside down in one way or another. Mother Clelia experienced this many times. She entered the Sisters of Our Lady of the Snows at age twenty-two, expecting to stay for the rest of her life. But the convent was destroyed by an earthquake, forcing her to return home. Clelia Merloni would enter several other religious communities before hearing God's call to found the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. She continued to experience many difficulties and reversals of her plans. But she told her sisters, "Jesus...demands of us a trust that is illuminated in His loving Heart, a total abandonment in His most holy providential Hands."
When things don't turn out the way we expect, it's easy to get angry or frightened. Yet we really can trust that, whatever this year holds, God wants to bring us closer to the Heart of Jesus. Jesus wants us to know his mercy more powerfully, live more faithfully, and love others more generously.
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