BREAK OLD BAD HABITS
IN THE NEW YEAR!

Are you looking to break some bad habits in this year? New Year’s Resolutions are very much a staple for many of us in the afterglow of the Christmas season. Perhaps you’re looking to make some changes for the better in your life.

Maybe it’s from some unwanted attachment to drugs, alcohol, lust, envy, pride, or some other such impediment to sanctity. Or maybe you just want to get a better start before Lent to give your soul a good “spring cleaning”. Let Jesus help you with this! Maybe some thoughts similar to this prayer might help:

Dear Lord, I need your help to free myself from bad habits and disordered thinking that keeps me from being the person you created me to be. Help me to be responsive to your graces for a more firm purpose of amendment in my life for this new year and for years to come, one day at a time. Heavenly Father, I make this request through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Remember what our Lord said in the Gospels that without Him we can do nothing (John 15:5) but also that with Him all things are possible (Matt 19:26).

This short prayer might also be helpful:

O Lord Jesus Christ, in presenting ourselves before Thine adorable Face to ask of Thee the graces of which we stand most in need, we beseech Thee, above all, to grant us that interior disposition of never refusing at any time to do what Thou requirest of us by Thy Holy Commandments and Divine inspirations. Amen.

Something about the change in the calendar to a new year encourages many of us to make a fresh start in our lives, indeed! Yet the change of the date is not in and of itself some kind of magical catalyst that automatically makes our good intentions successful. 

We are all called to be saints, as "citizens in training" for heaven. But Holy inclinations don’t come naturally for many of us in trying to do God's will for us as He wishes. As Christ prayed to His Father and ours in the garden of Gethsemane as His Passion began “Thy will be done not mine” (Luke 22:42),

But how many of us, quite understandably, considering our fallen nature, would just as soon change that part of the Lord's Prayer taking out the "Th" and putting an "M" in instead, as in "My kingdom come, My will be done”. 

And the secular and increasingly pagan societies in which most of us live don't help matters much! We're often encouraged to be our own judges of what is right and wrong. And that each of us can have our own truth. Pope Benedict XVI bemoaned what he called a “Dictatorship of relativism” in this regard. 

Yet such thinking goes against God’s will for us to love HIm with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind and to love our neighbors as ourselves, as He would have us do (Luke 10:27)!

When our will supplants God’s will for us, we can all too easily see love as being what we can get from others as opposed to what we can give them; and seeking in others foremost not what is best for them but rather what is best for us. 

Considering how easily habits can form that are not to our benefit given our fallen nature, changing course requires changing attitudes to be the best you can be as God sees it, not as the world might.

If this seems like too daunting a task, keep in mind that many of our great saints had their own struggles with their lower natures. St. Paul once bemoaned his own sinful proclivities (Romans 7:15- 27).

And in his famous work Confessions St. Augustine wrote that shortly before his conversion to Catholicism, he was plagued by “the strong force of habit” over his sinful inclinations. You may well recall that he had been asking God beforehand to, as he put it “Grant me chastity and continence, but not yet.” 

Indeed, we human beings can be very stubborn, ornery and full of foolish pride about turning our lives over to God in breaking bad habits. And we live in a culture that has often looked favorably upon our having a debauched rather than a devout frame of mind for decades now.

For example, think of. this title of a hit album from the rock band the Doobie Brothers from 50 years ago: “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits” and that's not good. Looking at pornography to fight loneliness, or using alcohol or drugs to deal with insecurity or feelings of inadequacy, doesn't work too well overall, now does it?

So, in the new year, to avoid discouragement, it's probably best to work on changes you wish to make in your life a day at a time. And in prayer and your own thoughts ask God for His help in letting go of that habit or weakness that's troubling you.

And, in all this, bring God your failures and your foibles in prayer, and in your own words as well, and ask Him to help you overcome them. And don’t be afraid to seek Him out continuously.

It might seem at times like he's not listening or not answering you, but keep asking, seeking, and knocking at His door (Matt 7:7) in effect, in any case, with all the perseverance and hope you can muster for His aid.

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com

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