We must allow this power a claim in regard to such things only as we have chosen according to a free response to value. In this sense asceticism, too, makes use of the force of habit. Strictly speaking, it is not so much things absolutely valuable that are meant here as, rather, means to some good purpose: a training that enables us to attain something properly valuable. The technique of good works alone, never the value itself, should become the object of a habit. Thus, for example, we may train ourselves for early rising by acquiring the habit; yet, in the motivation of our hearing Mass every morning the fact that it has become a habit with us must play no part whatsoever.

Even as regards the technique of good works, however, the power of habit should not extend beyond its usefulness as a means in the service of our freedom. We must preserve the freedom to discontinue without great difficulty, even a salutary habit whenever that is demanded by our obedience to the call of God.

In other words, we must remain masters even of our good habits; and much more must we guard against allowing anything that is merely pleasant or comfortable to become our master, just because we have grown accustomed to it. It is not the accident of habit that ought to determine our orientation but we who ought freely to direct the evolution of our habits.

Habit may decrease our sensibility to genuine values

There is another side to the possible danger involved by habit. It may not only enchain us to certain things which it causes us to overvalue; it may also numb our aliveness to genuine values.

This, again, may happen in various manners. First, habit as such may sometimes bring about a general decrease of our sensibility to true values. Man is so fashioned that whatever he experiences for the first time—whatever he has just discovered—is likely to evoke in him a particularly vivid and plastic impression. It need not be his first actual contact with a thing—what we mean is the moment when the true significance of that thing first dawns upon him. After a while, the impression will in many cases tend to fade; familiarity with an object is apt to breed, if not contempt, a kind of indifference. This we cannot but register as the manifestation of a specific and ineradicable human weakness.

To be sure, in regard to many things it really means a gift of divine mercy. Inasmuch as it results in a mitigation of physical pain, of the suffering caused by want, of the terror inspired by perilous situations, the blunting effect of habit deserves to be considered a happy and liberating influence in the lives of men.