Neither should we simply get accustomed to the hard trials imposed on us by God—such as the loss of a beloved person, or again, the state of spiritual dryness. We should certainly bear them in patience, but at the same time clearly perceive their character as a cross, and endeavor to discern the meaning God intends them to convey to us.

Least of all should we suffer habit to make us obtuse in regard to sin. Repeated lapses into the same kind of sin may easily dishabituate us from a keen perception of the antithesis to value it embodies: we tend to consider the offense in question no longer as “so very bad,” and allow certain channels to form in our mental world through which we may all the more glibly slip into that sin.

We must fight this tendency with the utmost determination, particularly in the following way. We should never repress (that is, dismiss or crowd out from our memory) any wrong we have done, nor content ourselves with a mere passive guilty conscience, but work out an explicit and active repentance of any transgression we may have committed, disavowing our wrong expressly before God, and accusing ourselves in Confession; whereby the barrier that separates us from sin is restored, the trench we filled up when committing the first sin is dug out again, and the grooves of sin are prevented from forming.

Habit may lead us to consider blessings as if they were due to us

Finally, habit has also the bad effect of tempting us to regard the blessings of God as something self-evidently due to us, something to which we are strictly entitled as it were. Habit is apt to make us not only ungrateful but arrogant. The unmerited gifts that the “Father of all lights” bestows upon us we easily come to claim as our legitimate property so that, should any new benefits we covet be denied us, we shall be inclined to believe ourselves wronged. We shall deem our temporary separation from a beloved person, for instance, an intolerable hardship instead of considering what an immense gift the union of loving hearts represents in itself.

He who is truly free knows—with a living knowledge—that everything is an unmerited gift of the merciful goodness of God; that before him we are beggars devoid of any claim whatsoever.

From our very existence, our vocation, and our redemption, to every ray of the sun that enlivens us with its warmth and its luster, and to every drop of water that quenches our thirst—everything is a gratuitous gift of His inexhaustible goodness. All the truths we are blessed in knowing, all beauty we are allowed to enjoy; every moment of good health and every bit of nourishment we take—all these are undeserved benefits in no wise due to us. How often do we misuse the gifts of God; with how much ingratitude and indifference do we requite His blessings!