A new Catholic acquaintance keeps speaking of 'becoming.' Is that a New Age idea?

You bet it is. The common denominator among the cults is how they answer the problem of sin, evil, and suffering: they say it is going to get better, just wait, and we will train you to see it when it comes. So there is always this idea of becoming, of things steadily improving until you reach your Nirvana or enlightenment; that is the same in Hinduism and Buddhism. Christianity says the opposite. Yes, you increase in grace, so in that limited sense you are becoming; but you are never going to escape this world. As long as you live here, this is it: sin, evil, the devil, and your own unsaved body with its proclivity to sin, which we call concupiscence. You do not run away from it or pretend it is gone; you face it and learn to cope with it a little better each day, but the goal is to be rid of it all only in the next world. You are going to grow old and decrepit and die, and then pass into another world, because there is nothing you can do to fix this one; it is what it is. That is why we sink no stakes here; this world is not our home. We are like people in a burning building we know will collapse, and the only thing worth doing while we are here is to bring as many others out with us as we can.