Part 1, Chapter 20
I remember watching the movie Finding Nemo and one of the lines from it,” just keep swimming.” It is an often quoted line in pop culture. What I like about the line is that it reminds us to keep moving. Now we have made the meditations, we are 20 chapters into the book; we need to keep moving forward. St. Francis De Sales has us make a resolution. A resolution is a formal intention to do something. In this case our resolution is made to help us keep moving forward, we need to keep swimming. We are swimming upstream, against the current. We have agreed to follow Christ and our hearts are more open to Him. We could easily go with the flow and float down the river and give up on the devout life.
This is where the resolution comes in; we make a promise to God to keep going. We thank Him for what He has done so far and now we continue to go against the current of the river, which just wants to sweep us along. “Be pleased, O eternal, all-powerful, and all-loving God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to confirm me in this my resolution, and accept my sincere and willing offering” (Introduction to the Devout Life, 31). God wants to strengthen us; He wants to help us along the river of life. We are not alone in this and by making the resolution we ask the Angels and Saints to be with and help us in our resolve. We make this resolution to help us so that we will honestly keep going forward. Making a resolve makes this more official and it says that we want to do this, that we are committed. A resolution equals a commitment. In this case, it is a commitment both to God and moving forward. So remember the words of that movie, “JUST KEEP SWIMMING.”