Getting Spiritually Healthy in the New Year

Tina Mayeux considers the importance of helping our families make good choices regarding what we watch, read, and listen to.

It’s a New Year and, along with toasts and celebratory fireworks, many of us have ushered in 2024 with new goals and intentions. Making sensible food choices is a popular resolution and one that can help lead us to a healthier lifestyle. Just as the holidays are a common time to overindulge, January is often a time for reevaluating our eating habits and opting for healthier meals. Although many Catholics are still celebrating the Christmas season, now is a popular time to begin to recover from the holiday indulgence by swapping out fruitcake and cookies for fruits and vegetables.

Convincing our children and teenagers to participate along with us in our healthy-eating endeavors can be an added challenge. As mothers, we often feel responsible for providing nutritious meals and snacks for our families. This can become difficult when we are tired, ill, or simply overwhelmed with life. There have been so many days when, due to being too busy or simply exhausted, I have taken the easy way out and compromised, allowing my family to have that fast food to make life easier and less stressful. I know that these dietary compromises can have a negative effect on my family’s health, so I try to the best of my ability to give them healthy options whenever possible.

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In our spiritual lives also, we are affected by what we take in, including movies, music, reading material, and internet consumption. We are unfortunately surrounded and bombarded with words and images that can poison our souls and damage our relationship with Christ. Our social media feeds are peppered with unsolicited celebrity gossip and scandal, making it difficult to remain focused and prayerful. These sensational images can distract us from our goal of walking with Christ and hinder our progress in the spiritual life. At worst, they can lead us into sinful thoughts, words, and actions. St. Pio of Pietrelcina, who witnessed the rise of television and cinema during his lifetime, warned of their dangers and the negative and damaging effect they could have on our souls.

Eating healthy and choosing wisely what we watch on television or consume on the Internet can require much discipline and self-control. Let’s face it: most of us would prefer to choose a scrumptious slice of chocolate pie over a piece of celery. Similarly, we are often tempted toward what is flashy and entertaining in the realm of books, television, and social media, versus what is wholesome and edifying. It is not always easy to choose to read a spiritual book or engage in prayer time when we could be watching our favorite TV drama or scrolling through Facebook. It requires determination and self-sacrifice to choose what is best for our body and soul, but the benefits that we reap are well worth the effort. When we feed our souls what is good, true, and beautiful, we often are rewarded with the fruits of peace, joy, and spiritual growth.

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It requires determination and self-sacrifice to choose what is best for our body and soul, but the benefits that we reap are well worth the effort. #CatholicMom

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Making wise choices about what we read, hear, or watch can be especially difficult for young people. As mothers, we can encourage our children and teenagers to be discerning about the books, music, movies, and other forms of media they choose. I have used this image of junk food to instruct my teenage and young adult children about the dangers of immoral content in the media they consume. I remind them that, just as eating too many sugary or high-fat foods can lead to physical illnesses, reading, listening to, and watching morally questionable things can contribute to spiritual sickness and sin.

Some negative and sinful words and images will inevitably reach our children through television, social media, and the other people they encounter. However, we can arm our children early on by instilling in them a love for Scripture and quality literature, movies, and television programs. We can also ask St. Michael and their guardian angels, along with their patron saints and the Blessed Virgin, to protect them from harmful words and images. In addition, we can keep the lines of communication open and engage in conversation with our children about these issues, encouraging them to choose healthy spiritual food that will nourish their minds and souls.

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