New Years Day has been a sober affair for me the past few years. Since my wife usually works overnights on New Years Eve, I'm in with the kids--we drink fizzy soda, have a little dance party, and do a YouTube countdown to midnight. Because I'm not drinking or smoking typically, I wake up grateful the whole affair is over and feeling rather good. I was up at 6:30am this morning, did fifteen minutes on the elliptical, took a cold shower, had a protein shake and coffee, and listened to a podcast on the neuroscience of addiction.
The period between Christmas and New Years is a consistently a hard period for me mentally, and I have on more than one occasion been tempted to pause "just saying no" to indulge in my addiction. I have so far resisted, but it keeps knocking on the door daily like a Jehovah's Witness that can't take a hint.
Recovery is the epitome of the synthesis of grace and work. God saves us, pulls us from the miry pit and places us on a rock--but he expects us to do the work (aided by grace) of enduring suffering, and exercising our free will, in order to not hop off, to stay rooted in sobriety. Sometimes it is minute by minute or hour by hour, just to keep saying "no" to sin and slavery, and "yes" to life and freedom.
There is an expression sometimes used in twelve steps of being a "grateful addict." It's a curious phrase, isn't it, to attribute gratefulness to something that may have robbed you of everything you have, stolen everything from you that you love.
But think about the Easter proclamation of the Felix Culpa (O Happy Fault), and it may have a theological context:
O love, O charity beyond all telling,
to ransom a slave you gave away your Son!
O truly necessary sin of Adam,
destroyed completely by the Death of Christ!
O happy fault
that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!
We often pine and lament our lot here on earth, that we had it so good in the garden and that Adam and Even had to go screw it up. God, in His goodness, did not desire us to sin and be subjected to the punishment due to disobedience--but his also omnipotence, He knew we would fall. Christ existed before time, and so, in fact, the Fall was 'factored in' to the divine economy, and Christ's incarnation a necessary part of making the wrong right again (something we could not do on our own).
St. Ambrose had a series of meditations on this mystery of how even sin can be used and redeemed by God: “My fault has become for me the price of redemption, through which Christ came to me. For me Christ tasted death. Transgression is more profitable than innocence. Innocence had made me arrogant, transgression made me humble” (De Iacob et vita beata, I, 21)
There is also what Dostoevsky wrote in Notes From the Underground that I think is a worthy meditation on this topic,
“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea...and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element...simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.”
We can never go back to the Garden, as much as we may desire to; it simply is not our lot. Daily we toil for our bread, we experience death, and concupiscence is our constant companion. Life is work, struggle, and loss. We think, "if only I would have married this person instead of that person," or "my life would have been perfect if I never would have touched x substance." And yet, there is beauty in the contrast, and meaning in our suffering and trial. Look at what St. Paul writes in his letter to the Romans:
"The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom 5:20-21)
Sometimes, God uses our brokenness and falls for His glory and our redemption. Were we left to be eating spiritual cakes all day, shielded like princes from the horror of death and suffering, we would grow plump with spiritual comfort and prideful at our mastery.
For what does David say? "For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance" (Ps 66:10-12).
And Isaias: "Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tried you in the furnace of affliction" (Is 48:10).
And St. Peter: "And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you" (1 Pt 5:10).
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