In holy wakefulness he must beware not to give free rein to any impulse lacking the sanction of his conscious central personality. He must never, as it were, say, “Well, in the rough my daily work is done, so now I may let myself go.” Rather he must uproot his specific inhibitions and thus break a path for himself across the underwood of his nature, so that he may at any time follow the call of God uninhibited.

Habit may constrict our freedom

A heavy curtailment of our freedom arises from our frequent subjection to the force of habit. The mere fact that we often do or undergo a thing, or that we are accustomed to certain conditions, fosters a tendency in us to stick to those things or to maintain those conditions, whatever their intrinsic merits. This tendency reflects a general trait in human nature, but we must not suffer it to govern our feelings and acts unchecked. The mere familiarity of a thing is not by itself a legitimate reason for our cultivating it.

Two cases may be distinguished here. On the one hand, there are things which have no primary attraction for us at all which owe their power over us to the force of habit only. To this purely formal dominance of habit as such a Christian ought never to submit. He should never allow a thing of neutral content to become indispensable to him through habituation alone. For this means a ballast thwarting his free response to the call of God; an illegitimate power gradually fettering him with invisible chains. He should combat a habit of this kind whenever it raises its head, by specific ascetical practices.

On the other hand, there is the case of habit reinforcing our allegiance to things that do attract us by virtue of their content itself. Thus, we may grow habituated to things really valuable, such as an orderly regulation of our daily life; to things merely agreeable, certain comforts for instance, or smoking and drinking; or again, to outright vices. In respect of this second case, our task is not to fight the power of habit as such but to place it at the service of our free will. We must not leave to chance which habits we contract.

Habit must play no part in value-response