During a pre-Christmas trip to Toronto, New York Times columnist David Brooks offered a small vignette that can provide us with a new year’s resolution but, more, a spiritual shift for life.

This new year my resolution was to be less punctual. Why? Because punctuality has always been both my obsession and my curse. 

I am writing this column late in December, thinking of the annual ritual of making resolutions. I do not think in my life I ever followed through on a New Year’s resolution — but I have made resolutions at other times of the year that I have stuck to like glue. 

Earlier this month, I was reading about the fathers of three modern Irish literary geniuses — Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce — when I came upon a fascinating fact about Wilde’s mother.

I have been thinking a lot over the last couple of years about how God comes to us. In tragedy and grief, in deep joy and hope, in confusion and in waiting. In all these places, I am deeply convinced that He comes. Still, I often struggle to recognize Him.

When told this issue of The Register would be dedicated to not only a year in review, but a decade in review, the idea immediately intrigued me.

Greta Thunberg has been named by Time magazine as its person of the year because of the global attitudinal shift towards climate change the magazine says she has created.

I’m sitting in the shadow of a Christmas tree weighed down with lights and finery, while a stuffed teddy bear with a beguiling smile sits patiently at the base watching me through button eyes. It could be one of countless Christmas trees anywhere in the world, but this one holds special meaning for myself and the young lady sitting next to me. 

As Catholics, we all know Christ is the reason for the season. We try our best not to let the materialism of the moment eclipse the birth of Christ. Many of us manage to carve out time to attend midnight Mass and even participate in Advent prayers and events.

It truly does seem, at times, as though the news of the world is relentlessly despairing.