You Have All That You Need

I had been a smoker and user of nicotine for at least twenty years--on and off, but mostly on. In June of 2016 I stopped, and did not use nicotine at all for a year and a half, until a few months ago when I had a cigar with a buddy and it spiraled out from there back into a full-blown addiction. The patterns and junkie-behavior were familiar, but we always have a way to rationalize such things. My issue may have been nicotine, but substitute your own--alcohol or drugs, pornography/masturbation, gossip, shopping, cutting, comfort, etc--and you'll see what I mean. When I recognized it, I brought it to the light, received encouragement and prayer, and just stopped cold turkey. I've heard smoking is harder to quit than heroin. It's been two weeks, and so far so good.

If you've ever seen someone try to kick a stranglehold like heroin, you know it's vicious. There is something almost demonic about the hold it has on a person. I took a man once to a detox center who had been using heroin since he was fifteen--that is, about seventeen years-- but wanted to be free and get clean. He was an internationally trained chef who used to teach cooking classes, but not a day had gone by that he had not had a fix, having grown up in a family of drug dealers in Puerto Rico and having always had access. When we arrived and they were preparing the room, everything was stripped bare ("so they can't kill themselves," the orderly told us) and the bed was bolted to the floor. The withdrawal was severe.

The funny thing about addiction is that it is how it relates to our free-will. Our free will is one of the greatest gifts God has given to us, because it gives us the capacity to love of our own volition. We are not robots or slaves--we can choose to accept God's love or reject it, and we in turn can choose to love or refuse to love. This is what makes love what it is and why it is so special--the freedom to will it, even (and especially) when you don't "feel" it.

As it relates to smoking, at least for me, here's the thing--it always starts with a free act of the will. For me it was being in driver's ed class and bumming one on break. I got a head rush and felt a little sick, but the more I consumed, the more my body got used to it. What started out as something pleasurable, when it moved to dependency, became less and less pleasurable and more and more about avoiding the pain and suffering that comes with withdrawal. So, you may have been living for those little moments of pleasure at one point, but when an addiction digs it's talons in and gets established, those moments become less about gaining pleasure and more about avoiding pain.

But no one had me tied to a chair popping cigarettes into my mouth and lighting them and forcing me to inhale. No, that was all me. I may have been disadvantaged through this weakened state of will, but my original culpability in taking that first drag at age 16 was completely mine. I'm not sure what I think when addictions are referred to as a disease, I don't really want to get into that debate, but I know even when it is severely weakened, we all retain our free will to a degree.

Here's another thing: drug pushers, whether the local corner soldier or the corporate company men, play on your fear. What fear, you may ask? The fear of withdrawal, of course. What became the source for pleasure now has become the cure for pain, and they have it, and they know you want it and will do whatever you need to to keep the Pain Man from rapping at your door. So they say things like, "you couldn't possibly quit, so here's a healthier alternative." It may be drug lozenges or drug gum or drug patches, or vaping, or methadone, or what-have-you. They market it like, "here's the medicine you need so you won't die," because they know your fear: the pain of withdrawal is so bad, so uncomfortable, it literally will kill me.

Planned Parenthood, America's largest abortion provider, adopts a similar tactic: you can't live without sex, so at least use contraception. And when it fails, you can't possibly carry a baby to term. There's too much going against you. Your life will be over, your dreams will never come true, you will be trapped forever. For your sake, and everyone else's, you'd be better off aborting.

Fear is a powerful motivator.  And no one plays on it better than Satan. What does it say in Scripture? "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear" (1 John 4:18). And what do we fear? It could be anything--babies, suffering, humiliation, loss of friends, loneliness, crowds, heights, failure, loss of income, losing face, the dark, spiders...whatever it is, Satan knows it. And he will leverage it to use against us.

But fear is a specter--it lives in the mind. It doesn't exist outside of our consciousness. Julian of Norwich called sin a "no-thing"--it exists, metaphysically speaking, as a negation, the way dark is an absence of light, not a thing in and of itself. And with regards to Satan, he is a chained dog--he only has as much power as God gives him. He cannot force us to sin, only tempt us, because our will, that gift of God, is off limits. He may be rabid, he may get right up in your face and you may feel his hot stank breath and feel the slobber from his jaw, but he has no power over you. He can't touch you.

By the grace of baptism, and the sacrament of Confirmation, we have everything we need to effectively fight and resist sin, stand as witnesses, and be holy. God has given that grace to us as a free gift--to "be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48). It may be more helpful for our limited and triggered brains to think of Jesus' words more in terms of wholeness or completeness. When we do fall, when we "choose to do wrong and fail to do good," we have the grace of the sacrament of Confession and absolution, to get up and get back in the ring and fight. Fall, get up. Fall, get up. Get up, get up, get up. When we are in a weakened state (which is really all the time), we need to rely not on our own strength, but on God's strength and grace, which He imparts to all who ask for it (Mt 7:7; 21:22)

Sin is like an addiction--it's not so much the pleasure of experiencing it (always fleeting, always bitter), but the avoidance of the suffering that comes with resisting it. Take masturbation, for example. For a man, the temptations come in wily fashion when the Temptor says to us, "if you give in this one time, the pressure will go away and you have relief, peace." One knows the pleasure is fleeting, but the thought of resisting it is like a road that never ends. The physiological pressure in a man's body is a reminder of that. Because self-control, chastity, temperance are all virtues, the devil wants to work against them and so he plants seeds of doubt that we do not, in fact, have the capacity to resist such temptation. "If you don't masturbate (or whatever), you will die." It is an inversion of his tempting strategy in the Garden when the serpent's lie was that Adam and Even would NOT die if they ate the fruit.

Because of their disobedience, we have inherited their concupiscence. But because of the redeeming power of Christ, the New Man, the New Adam, we have been set free from the chains of sin and death. We, literally, have everything we need to be saints by Baptism, the Sacraments, and sanctifying grace, like a seed that contains everything it needs to become a tree when it is nurtured by rain, sunlight, and nutrients in the ground.

Here's another thing: Jesus doesn't "lower the bar" to meet us in our weakness; He gives us grace to lift us up over them, like an Olympic pole vaulter. He gives us the hard teachings that make our jaws drop to the floor. He tells us that even should a man look at a woman with lust in his heart, he has committed adultery with her. And we say to ourselves, "who can live such a teaching?" But by grace, we can. When we say something is "impossible," He responds that all things are possible for he who believes (Mk 9:23). He came down to earth to lift us up to Heaven.

So, what is our excuse? It is not some cruel joke or trickery by the Lord to hold this ideal up and not give us what we need to attain it, to finish the race victorious. He is not a cruel and conniving God, but a loving Father who sent His Son to save us, not condemn us. We have the saints in heaven who have gone before us as proof that this is attainable. Their miracles attest to where they are, their humanity confirms that they were men and women like us.

When we are given the capacity to be saints, given everything we need, we do not do so because it is arduous! Like the addict addicted to our sin, and in our fear and lack of trust in listening to the wrong voices, we fear letting go of our idols, we fear the pain of withdrawal, we misplace our desire to fleeting pleasure, and do not, in fact, believe that God has called us to be saints. Let me tell you--He has! He NEEDS you to be a saint. The Church needs you. People are DEPENDING on you! You think firefighters and police officers and EMTs and soldiers are heroes? Yes they are, but how much more so YOU, who God knew in the womb before you were born, who made you for a purpose.

Why did God make you? The answer is simple: God made you to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven (Baltimore Catechism). The saints are holy heroes, and they are our companions, and you my friend, are on their guest list. Don't shy away from what you are called to because of fear or suffering. Fear and suffering in this life pale in light of eternity. We need you. God will give you still more to ensure you achieve the purpose He has set for you, send you angels to minister to you as He did for His Son in the garden of his suffering. You have all that you need. Heaven wants you. And we need you.