Evil effects of bad habits
“Go ye into the village that is over against you, and immediately you shall find an ass tied.”—Matthew 21:2
Wishing on this day to enter Jerusalem, to be there acknowledged and confessed as the true Messiah, promised and sent by God to save the world, the Savior told his disciples to go to a certain village, where they would find an ass tied; they were to loose her and bring her to him. “The ass which was tied,” St. Bonaventure explains, “denotes a sinner.” This agrees with what the Wise Man had already said, that the wicked are bound by the chains of their own sins: “His own iniquities catch the wicked, and he is fast bound with the rope of his own sins” (Prov. 5:22). But just as Jesus Christ could not sit on the ass until she was first loosed, so he cannot dwell in a soul bound by her own sins.
If, then, brethren, there is among you any soul bound by some bad habit, let her hear this morning the Lord who says to her: “Loose the bonds from off thy neck, captive daughter of Sion” (Isa. 52:2). Loose yourself, my daughter, from this chain of sins, which makes you the slave of the devil; and loose yourself soon, before the bad habit gains such power over you that it renders your amendment morally impossible ever after, and so leads you to eternal perdition.
This morning, then, I want to show in three points the great harm that a bad habit brings with it.
First Point.—A bad habit blinds the understanding.
Second point.—It hardens the heart.
Third point.—It diminishes our strength.
First Point.—A bad habit blinds the understanding.
1. Of those who live in the habit of sin, St. Augustine writes: Ipsa consuetudo non sinit videre malum, quod faciunt—“The habit itself does not allow them to see the evil which they do.” A bad habit takes away the sight of sinners, so that they no longer see either the evil they do or the ruin it brings upon them; and so they live blinded, as though there were no God, no heaven, no hell, no eternity. “Sins,” the saint goes on to say, “however dreadful, when they become habitual appear small, or seem to be no sins at all.” How, then, can the soul guard against them, when she no longer recognizes their ugliness, nor sees the harm they do her?
2. St. Jerome says that habitual sinners “have not even any shame in their crimes.” To do evil naturally brings a certain blush with it; but a bad habit makes even this blush disappear. St. Peter compares the habitual sinner to a swine that turns and rolls again in its own mire: “The sow that was washed is returned to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Pet. 2:22). The very mire blinds their eyes; and so it comes about that, instead of grieving and being ashamed of their filthiness, they rejoice and boast in it. “A fool worketh mischief as it were for sport” (Prov. 10:23). “Who are glad when they have done evil” (Prov. 2:14).
Hence the saints continually beg light from God, for they know that, once the light is lost, anyone may become the most wicked man in the world. How is it, then, that so many Christians, who already know by faith that there is a hell and a God who judges and cannot but punish the wicked, go on living in sin until death and are lost? “Their own malice blinded them” (Wis. 2:21). Sin has taken away their sight, and so they perish.
3. Job said that the habitual sinner is filled with vices: “His bones shall be filled with the vices of his youth” (Job 20:11). Every sin brings darkness into the understanding; and so the more sins are multiplied by a bad habit, the more the blindness grows. The light of the sun cannot enter a vessel filled with clay; and so the light of God cannot enter a heart full of vices, to make it see the precipice toward which it is rushing. Deprived of light, the habitual sinner goes on from sin to sin, without ever thinking of amendment. “The wicked walk round about” (Ps. 12:9).
Once the wretched man has fallen into the dark pit of a bad habit, he thinks of nothing but sinning, he speaks of nothing but sins, and he no longer recognizes the evil of sin. In short, he becomes like a beast that has lost its reason, and seeks and desires nothing but what pleases the senses. “And man, when he was in honor, did not understand: he is compared to senseless beasts, and is become like to them” (Ps. 49:13). Hence what the Wise Man says comes to pass: “The wicked man, when he comes into the depth of sins, contemneth” (Prov. 18:3). St. Chrysostom applies this very text to the habitual sinner, who, shut up in that pit of darkness, despises everything—despises sermons, the calls of God, corrections, censures, hell, and God himself—and becomes like the vulture that feeds on the rotten carcass before it and would rather let the hunters kill it than leave its prey.
4. My brethren, let us tremble, as David trembled when he said: “Let not the tempest of water drown me, nor the deep swallow me up; and let not the pit shut her mouth upon me” (Ps. 69:16). When someone falls into a pit, he has hope of getting out as long as the mouth of the pit is open; but if the mouth closes, he is utterly lost. When the sinner has fallen into a bad habit, the mouth of the pit closes little by little as his sins multiply; and once it has finished closing, he is abandoned by God.
My poor sinner, then, if you have the habit of any sin, seek quickly to come out of this pit of hell before the mouth closes—before, I mean, God deprives you entirely of his light and abandons you; for if he abandons you by withdrawing his light, all will be over for you, and you will remain damned.
Second Point.—A bad habit hardens the heart.
5. A bad habit not only blinds the understanding but also hardens the sinner’s heart: “His heart shall be as hard as a stone, and as firm as a smith’s anvil” (Job 41:15). By a bad habit the heart becomes like a stone; and instead of being softened by divine inspirations, by sermons, by hearing of the judgment of God, of the pains of the damned, of the passion of Jesus Christ, it hardens all the more—just as the anvil is hardened the more by the strokes of the hammer: stringetur quasi malleatoris incus.
“Their heart,” St. Augustine writes, “becomes hard against the rain of grace, so that it bears no fruit.” Divine calls, the remorses of conscience, the terrors of God’s justice—these are showers of grace; but when the habitual sinner, instead of drawing fruit from these divine favors by weeping for his sins and amending, goes on sinning, his heart grows harder, and by this he gives a sign of his certain damnation, as St. Thomas of Villanova said: Induratio damnationis indicium—“Hardness is a sign of damnation.” For once the light is lost and the heart hardened, it follows that the sinner will live obstinate until death, according to the terrible foreboding of the Holy Ghost: “A hard heart shall fare evil at the end” (Ecclus. 3:27).
6. And what use are confessions, when a short time after the confession one returns to the same sins? St. Augustine says: “He who strikes his breast and does not amend confirms his sins, but does not take them away.” When you strike your breast before the confessor, and then do not amend and do not remove the occasion, then, says the saint, you do not take away your sins but make them more solid and permanent—that is, you make yourself more obstinate. “The wicked walk round about” (Ps. 12:9). Such is the unhappy life of habitual sinners: they go round and round from sin to sin; and if for a little while they abstain, at the first occasion they return to them at once.
Of such sinners St. Bernard pronounces their damnation certain: Vae homini, qui sequitur hunc circuitum—“Woe to the man who follows this round” (Sermon 12 on the Psalms).
7. “But no,” says that young man, “I mean to amend later, and give myself in earnest to God.” But if a bad habit takes possession of you, when will you amend? The Holy Ghost declares that the young man who falls into a bad habit will not leave his evil life even in old age: “A young man, according to his way, even when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). Men habituated to some vice have been seen committing the very same sins even when near death.
Father Recupito relates that a man condemned to death, while he was going to the gallows, raised his eyes, saw a young woman, and consented to a bad thought. Father Gisolfo relates, too, that a certain blasphemer, likewise condemned to the gallows, when he was thrown from the ladder and felt the rope tighten on his throat, broke out into a blasphemy, and so died.
8. “He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth” (Rom. 9:18). God shows mercy up to a certain point, and then he hardens the sinner’s heart. How does he harden it? St. Augustine explains: Obduratio Dei est nolle misereri—“The hardening by God is the willing not to show mercy.” It is not that the Lord directly hardens the habitual sinner; but in punishment of the ingratitude shown to his favors, he withdraws the helps of his grace, and so the sinner’s heart is left hard and turned to stone: “God hardens the heart not by imparting malice, but by withholding mercy.” God does not harden the heart by infusing into it the malice of obstinacy, but by denying it his mercy—that is, the efficacious grace to be converted. By withdrawing from the earth, the sun hardens water into ice.
9. And that hardness which is obstinacy of heart, says St. Bernard, is not formed all at once, but little by little, until the heart becomes so hard that it no longer yields to the divine threats, and is made more obstinate by the scourges themselves: Paulatim in cordis duritiam itur; cor durum non minis cedit, flagellis duratur—“Little by little one comes to hardness of heart; the hard heart does not yield to threats, but is hardened by scourges.” In habitual sinners are verified the words of David: “And at thy rebuke, O God of Jacob, they have slumbered” (Ps. 76:7). Even earthquakes, thunderbolts, and sudden deaths do not terrify the habitual sinner. Rather than rouse him to see his wretched state, they seem instead to lull him into that deadly sleep in which he slumbers and is lost.
Third Point.—A bad habit diminishes our strength.
10. “He hath torn me with wound upon wound; he hath rushed in upon me like a giant” (Job 16:15). On this text St. Gregory reasons thus: if someone is attacked by his enemy, the first wound he receives will not leave him unable to defend himself; but if he then receives a second and a third, he will so far lose his strength that in the end he will be left dead. So it is with sin: at the first and second wound the soul receives from it, she will still have some strength left—always, of course, by means of divine grace; but if she goes on sinning, sin becomes habitual, it rushes in like a giant, and the soul has no more strength to resist it.
St. Bernard writes that the habitual sinner is like one who has fallen beneath a great stone and has no strength to move it, so that he rises only with difficulty: Difficile surgit, quem moles malae consuetudinis premit—“He whom the weight of a bad habit presses rises only with difficulty.” And before him St. Gregory said it: Lapis superpositus, cum consuetudine mens in peccato demoratur, ut etsi velit exsurgere jam non possit, quia moles desuper premit—“With a stone laid over it, the mind lingers in sin by habit, so that even if it wishes to rise it cannot, because the weight presses from above” (Moralia, Bk. 26, ch. 24).
11. St. Thomas of Villanova wrote that a soul deprived of the grace of God cannot live long without committing new sins: Anima a gratia destituta diu evadere ulteriora peccata non potest—“A soul deprived of grace cannot long escape further sins” (Conference 4 on the 4th Sunday of Lent). And St. Gregory, on that passage of David, “O my God, make them like a wheel, and as stubble before the wind” (Ps. 83:14), says: see with what ease a wisp of straw is moved by every wind, however slight; so it is with the man who, before falling into a bad habit, resisted for a time, but who, once he has contracted the habit, falls and falls again at every temptation to sin.
Habitual sinners, as St. Chrysostom wrote, become so weak at resisting the assaults of the devil that at times, dragged along by the habit they have formed, they are forced to sin against their own will: Dura res est consuetudo, quae nonnunquam nolentes committere cogit illicita—“Habit is a hard thing, which sometimes forces the unwilling to commit what is forbidden.” Yes; for, as St. Augustine says, in time a bad habit becomes a kind of necessity of sinning: Dum consuetudini non resistitur, facta est necessitas—“When habit is not resisted, it becomes necessity.”
12. St. Bernardine of Siena adds that a bad habit is turned into a second nature: Usus vertitur in naturam—“Use is turned into nature.” Hence, just as it is necessary for a man to breathe, so to habitual sinners it seems to become necessary to sin; and so they are made the slaves of sin. I say slaves: among men there are servants who serve for wages, and there are slaves who serve by force and without pay; and to this degree of slavery habitual sinners come, who sin sometimes without relish and sometimes without even having an occasion to sin—made the bought slaves of the devil.
St. Bernardine calls such men windmills, which keep turning the stone even when there is nothing to grind—meaning that, without any occasion before them, they go on sinning, at least by entertaining bad thoughts. The unhappy creatures, says St. Chrysostom, having lost the help of God, no longer do what they themselves wish, but what the devil wishes: Homo perdito Dei auxilio, non quod vult agit, sed quod diabolus—“Man, having lost God’s help, does not do what he wishes, but what the devil wishes.”
13. Hear what happened in a city of Italy, as an author relates to this purpose. A certain young man, habituated to an evil practice, though many times called by God to change his life, and admonished by others as well, went on living in his sin. One day the Lord let him see his sister struck dead suddenly. For a short time he trembled; but as soon as she was buried he forgot it, and returned to his vomit. Two months after his sister’s death he was laid on a bed by a slow fever; then he sent for a confessor and made his confession. But for all that, one day he cried out: “Alas, how late I have come to know the rigor of divine justice!” And turning to the physician he said: “Doctor, torment me no more with remedies, for my illness is past cure: I know for certain it is carrying me to the grave.” And then, turning to those who stood around him, he said:
“Know that, just as there is no remedy left for the life of this body of mine, so there is no remedy for the life of my poor soul. An eternal death awaits me. God has abandoned me; I see it in the hardness of my heart.”
Friends and religious came to give him courage to trust in the mercy of God, but he answered them with nothing else but: “God has abandoned me.” The writer who relates this fact says that, finding himself alone with the wretched young man, he said to him: “Take courage; unite yourself with God; receive the viaticum.” And the young man answered: “Friend, you are speaking to a stone. The confession I made was null, without sorrow. I do not want a confessor, I do not want the sacraments; and do not bring me the viaticum, for I will do things of horror.” So the writer left him disconsolate; and when he returned to visit him, the man’s relatives told him that during the night he had already breathed his last, without any priest to assist him; and they said too that near the dead young man’s room frightful howlings had been heard.
14. Behold the end that habitual sinners come to! My poor brother sinner, if you find yourself in the same misfortune of some bad habit, make a general confession soon, for your past confessions can hardly have been good. Come quickly out of the slavery of the devil. Hear what the Holy Ghost says to you: “Give not thy years to the cruel” (Prov. 5:9). Why will you serve a master so cruel as the devil, your enemy, who makes you lead an unhappy life here, only to make you lead a still more unhappy one in hell for all eternity?
“Lazarus, come forth.” Come out of this pit of sin; give yourself quickly to God, who calls you and stands ready to embrace you if you return to his feet. And tremble that this may be the last call for you, to which, if you do not correspond, you will be lost.
Points for Reflection
1. “If you have the habit of any sin, seek quickly to come out of this pit of hell, before God deprives you entirely of his light and abandons you; for if he abandons you by withdrawing his light, all will be over for you, and you will remain damned” (§4)
2. “When you strike your breast before the confessor, and then do not amend and do not remove the occasion, you do not take away your sins but make them more solid and permanent—that is, you make yourself more obstinate” (§6)
3. “Come out of this pit of sin; give yourself quickly to God, who calls you and stands ready to embrace you if you return to his feet. And tremble that this may be the last call for you, to which, if you do not correspond, you will be lost” (§14)