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With Your Rule
How To Change Bad Habits - Part Two
"A right philosophy of life is needed to complete the work, for evil habits cannot be overcome by the will alone; love is required as well. No alcoholic is cured until he finds something to value more highly than the attractions of alcohol. No other evil is renounced until the sinner finds some positive good he prizes above his sin... Evil habits are not driven out by our hate of them (for we do not always hate them properly). They are crowded out by the love of something else... [and] the new love that takes possession of us must be bigger than ourselves... for it is ourselves which need amendment."
Fulton Sheen, in "Way to Happiness", Greenwich Conn., Crest Book, 1961, p165
posted by Holly at 9:07 PM
1 Comments:
So - we have a bad habit. It could be the way we live our vocation that is the bad habit! And we feel like we can't overcome it... can't even set up a rule of life... will power doesn't seem enough.
Fulton Sheen gives us an idea of how to solve this here - in addition to analyzing what is sinful about our present behavior, trying to avoid those conditions which promote sin, and by engaging our will to attempt to live as God desires for us --
and the good idea he has is that we need a new 'motive' - a new 'love' - a new 'goal' which will replace the negative goals in our lives which hold us back.
When I first happened upon a mother's rule, it was the desire for 'order', or better , it was to stop the disorder... I had to find a way to deal with the negative things in my life. Thus a rule was a positive answer.
But say our lives aren't in such disarray. Does this mean a mother's rule is not for us? No.
A rule of life helps us in getting closer to God. There can be no true intimacy with God unless our lives are in order and we are recollected enough to be able to spend quality time with Him by living a recollected interior life.
So perhaps that 'something' which I need to replace my present bad habits then, is a desire to get closer to God... a desire to be with Him which inspires a new fidelity to my vocation... where we see a mother's rule as bringing about in our lives something we love even more than disorder or mediocrity...
Disorder in my life is not driven out just by hating it. It is fuel to get started. But unless the supernatural motive of love of God and desiring a deep intimacy with God takes over as our main motive, we will abandon our rules.
And if we don't have this deep desire for God, then we need to pray for our own conversion. And this is nothing to be ashamed of, but a reflection of reality - we are human after all...
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