“Only the Holy Spirit can purify the intellect, for unless a greater power comes and overthrows the despoiler, what he has taken captive will never be set free” -St. Diadochos of Photiki

“Darkness can only be scattered by light, hatred can only be conquered by love.” – St. Pope John Paul II

Are you struggling to overcome habitual sins? Does it feel you have fallen deeply into a habitual sin such that it has become a type of addiction you cannot seem to shake away completely? Some days or weeks you are free, the next thing you’re rolling in the mud of a horrible relapse. Do you feel like you should honestly stop telling God you are sorry because you have never seemed to get rid of falling? Such that in fact, even as you look at our lord, you can see the reality of some part of your consciousness craving the sin passionately and you can’t even say firmly that you’ll do whatever it takes for you to never go back to such sin. Are you confronted with the thoughts of being such a massive failure and an assured disappointment therefore you think you should spare God the empty promises of “I am sorry, I’ll stop doing that”? I was, and I want to tell you don’t give up, our Lord’s promises to us are true: “come to me all you who are heavy burdened and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).  “In the world you will have difficulties, but do not be discouraged; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). “Behold I make all things new” (Revelations 21:5). Trust our lord, he will really make you new as he has said.

Even if you may fear that they are under demonic attack which causes you to sin. Demons can only tempt a person to sin, they cannot cause a person to sin. It is still we who exercise our will and choose to accept the false promises of devils and when such sins become addictions or vices you must know demons didn’t build the house of addiction in you, they only painted it after you completely built it.

Habitual sins are only like a symptom of the true disease in the human which is deformation. Deformation is the weakening or deadening of the human spirituality, powers of the soul, psychological and physiological health such that a person loses much of their freedom to do the good things they ought to do. Deformation occurs when one habitually indulges in mortal sin to a large extent or when one has been exposed to and opens themselves up to strong beliefs and acts which deform their spirituality, mind, body and soul. There are two aspects of deformation:

1. Spiritual deformation in the senses of the conscience’s ability to see, understand God and communicate with God
2. The deformation of the soul in the crystallization of pride, insincerity and rebellion by the soul into it such that it gives birth to a “slavery disorder” where the powers of the soul (memory, intellect and will) are corroded and drained to groom a state of despair against God’s grace and mercy. This includes Psychological problems in the mind and Physiological problems in the body.

To counteract these corrosions the soul must crystalize holy desperation within it. Desperation is born from God’s grace leading a soul to intensify and crystallize humility, sincerity, mortification, contemplation, and an ardent irrepressible and persistent passion for God’s perfection and holiness in order to please him. These are crystallized in such a way that the soul destroys its old lifestyle of convenience so as to have nothing except a clear path to God and any act of his, as a manifestation of how it wants nothing else except to please God.

A soul which wishes to groom desperation must make prayers against the sin and prayers for deliverance along with radical covenants of penance by giving up some convenience you enjoy as penance and also carry out frequent mortification counteracting the distortion in the soul and body caused by the addiction.

It’s either we become docile and accept the supposed “suffering”, “humiliation” and new life that has come to our souls by giving up the old life we have that is too expensive for our sickened and injured souls or we’ll never see the glory of freedom God wants to give us.

Don’t punish yourself when you sin like as if mortification is atonement for sin in itself. The only atonement for sin is gotten through Our Lord Jesus. Instead of punishing yourself change your lifestyle to a more humble, prayerful, detoxifying, mortifying lifestyle and become a true penitent with perfect contrition, cut off friendships, quit the job, give out the phone, give away the laptop, do what you need to in order to fix your lifestyle to avoid sin.

Let us now look at the two deformations and how we can counteract them and overcome habitual sins

POINT 15: SPIRITUAL REPROBATION IN THE SENSES OF THE CONSCIENCE’S ABILITY TO SEE AND UNDERSTAND GOD

All that is evil, and can lead to hell comes from the ill belief that we “have a life that is our own to live for ourselves alone”. We can never truly overcome evil without rejecting and erasing this belief. The reason we are to become holy and rise to the greatest heights of sanctity is because we cannot love without being truly holy and sanctified because without love (charity) we have no merit before God, we do not please Him and we cannot be united to Him and His kingdom when we die because He is absolute love (charity). We are supposed to call others to God even when we are struggling to be pure and clear like water. The mission to call is not about your “supposed righteousness” but it is God’s call. Others can come to God and become greater saints than you, you should love and desire this, that the children surpass the parents.

In working against reprobation in our conscience we should consider the following 4 points:

Overcome habitual sins through prayer and silence in prayer to listen to God

All good or virtuous acts are a translation and manifestation of grace into action which over time is then seen as a type of virtue. All grace is gotten from a type of prayer (connection or communication with a revelation of God in this world). Since the depths of virtue or the height of sanctity that a soul attains comes from the level of God’s beauty which a soul has seen, opened itself up to, immersed itself in, absorbed and allowed to manifest, I believe it is safe to conclude that all grace comes from some type of connection or communication with the revelation of God to man. Man must respond to grace by opening himself up and immersing himself in it continuously and always.

You must therefore build your life on meditative prayers, adoration of Jesus in the blessed sacrament, listening to and reading sermons, spiritual books, websites, games, videos, movies, and writings and put yourself into the company of strong spiritual friends and societies. Your prayers should not be that you are “talking at” God but you must hunger to hear from God. Hearing from God should be the centre of your whole prayer!

If we prayed as often and as fervently as we ought to then the beauty of God and the horror for sin will always be present before us and we will have more motivation in our intellect to drive our will to overcome temptation and grow in holiness. Pray to God fervently, beg our lady, your guardian angels and patron saints to restrain and direct you, to pour God’s grace on you, to strengthen you, to purify you from your forming selfish desires seeping out of the wounds in your soul, ask the precious blood of Jesus to wash over you and cleanse and heal those wounds. Ask the Holy Spirit to burn away from you all that is not of Him through His purifying fire of Love, let him take away all evil thoughts already subconsciously forming and let the angels protect you against devils and let heaven inspire your soul so you would not fall.

Pray with your whole mind, pray with grit, pray with all you have, pray as if your life depends on it because it really does; because if you stop praying fervently continuously you will fall into lukewarmness and you will begin to lose sight of the deep value of graces given you, you will lose true gratefulness and appreciation for God and gifts to you and surely without fail a life of mortal sins is going to come upon you. When you find no joy, confidence and delight in God and His beauty because you feel you have fallen and it’s a righteous punishment on yourself, you will not have sufficient light of inspiring beauty from God and motivation in the powers of the soul and so you will never get out of the circle of habitual sin. You must trust God, you must see Him and his love for you over your imagined hopeless broken state, you must remember that He still loves you greatly and desires to purify you completely and lift you up, you must remember this seeing that nothing good in your life came from yourself, they all came from Him, beating yourself up like as if you will produce holiness and purity on your own will only make it worse. Look at Him and do what He tells you to do as your beating. Return to fervency in prayer, studies, teaching and joyfulness. Have disciplined daily reflective and meditative quiet prayers.

St. Diadochos of Photiki has a beautiful expression on this point, he says “Only the Holy Spirit can purify the intellect, for unless a greater power comes and overthrows the despoiler, what he has taken captive will never be set free (cf. Luke 11:21-22). In every way, therefore, and especially through peace of soul, we must make ourselves a dwelling-place for the Holy Spirit. Then we shall have the lamp of spiritual knowledge burning always within us; and when it is shining constantly in the inner shrine of the soul, not only will the intellect perceive all the dark and bitter attacks of the demons, but these attacks will be greatly weakened when exposed for what they are by that glorious and holy light. That is why the Apostle says: ‘Do not quench the Spirit’ (1 Thess. 5:19), meaning: “Do not grieve the goodness of the Holy Spirit by wicked actions or wicked thoughts, lest you be deprived of this protecting light.” The Spirit, since He is eternal and life-creating, cannot be quenched; but if He is grieved – that is if He withdraws – He leaves the intellect without the light of spiritual knowledge, dark and full of gloom.” [3]

When you are in serious temptation, draw out a sacramental or a prayer book or an mp3 with prayers and sermons and listen to it, say prayers and beg for God’s help and sincerely hope and seek heavenly intervention. When tempted always give God one foot in the door. The supernatural power to always resist falling into temptation is supplied by him. So while going through sanctification, you need to be patient with yourself as your purification is God’s work, not your work. As long as you make it your work, you will fall into pride and self-righteousness which would make you worse. Be patient with God and let him do the work. Give him the room and the credit and the record and be super grateful for his victories else you will fall into a self-absorbed desire for perfection and this will ruin your whole spiritual life.

Begin keeping a prayer journal for occasions of temptations, whenever they were overcome and how, discussions, questions and answers with God in silent prayers.

In that journal write about your journey, how you want to use it to report yourself to God and your spiritual director, save yourself and save other souls. While writing, be deeply and thoroughly sincere even in the openness of how much you are craving and desiring what is evil. Tell God to see how such passion is, and ask for His help in the witness and cloud of your patron saints, guardian angels, and all of heaven. Tell them if you have one a part of your mind actually hoping such evil comes to you and admit, that is how poor and ugly you have made your soul but that you know that the Holy Spirit and our Lord Jesus has promised that if we honestly ask in our brokenness, they will make sure to provide for us. Cry to them that we trust them to provide for us with painful situations that would drag us away from temptations, we will gladly accept whatever keeps us away from the temptations and we trust them for their promises to be met. Also, we pray they should inspire and motivate us to do our part so that we will do our part even if we are partly desiring the opposite, we’ll do our part by His power He surely supplies.

You must realize that goodness does not just come out of you and your will on your own, you must realize this, you must! Until you do you will continue to suffer shame and this sorrowful cycle of continuous sin till you realize you cannot afford this expensive life of convenience you want to live and desist from it to living the way which is profitable to you.

You must develop a perfectly strong intention and expel all sinful thoughts and intention every single bit of it, detest it, hate the temptations and pray against it, beg God to remove all weakness from you and chastise it out of you if necessary. Call on our lady, your guardian angels and patron saints in temptations and before temptations. Claim the supreme power of our Lord through the Holy Spirit and command demonic temptations to cease. Go away from the area where you can be tempted. move away from the temptation. Keep this fact in mind, you are never alone and that heaven is there with you and cheering you on, do you really want to do what you are about to do in the presence of God, the angels and saints?

Overcome habitual sins through a desperate search for the truth God reveals, growing in it and boldly proclaiming it

Do not just reject and work against the habitual sin alone, we must also more intensely work against the attachment, disposition and deep hidden likeness and desire for anything and everything sinful. Because whenever we purposely entertain the idea of that habitual sin, even if we could not manage to carry it out, we have sinned against God. Therefore we must work against the attachment to sin controlling us; this is done by having the habitual fantasies or thoughts of sin replaced with graceful thoughts or deeds such as aspirations, spiritual reading, intercessory prayers or spiritual writing. Blot out all those “very small” and “small” tendencies, dispositions and occasions which you put yourself in or allow happen to you which bring you illicit pleasure because it is exactly them that are the foundation and foothold of the spirits of compromise and excuses which makes sure you never escaped being destroyed by the setup temptation to habitual sin.

As St Francis de Sales put it “Thus it is a great sin in a woman to allow herself to dwell upon any unlawful affections, although she may have no intention of ever really yielding to them.

Do not argue with your Enemy, and give but one answer,—that with which Our Lord confounded him, “Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” 185 Just as the pure wife would make no reply, and cast no glance on the foul seducer who strove to lead her astray, but would straightway fly from him to her husband’s side, not arguing, but cleaving to her lawful lord in renewed fidelity;—so the devout soul when assailed by temptation should never trifle with it by answer or argument, but simply fly to the Side of Jesus Christ, its Bridegroom; renewing its pledges of unchanging devotion and faithfulness to Him.” [4]

Therefore, when you are tempted to any sin, examine whether you voluntarily exposed yourself to the temptation, and if you find that you have done so by putting yourself into its way, or by not foreseeing the temptation, as you ought to have done, then it is sin; but if you have done nothing to bring about the temptation, it is not in anywise to be imputed to you as sin.” [4]

“All the children of Israel went forth from the land of Egypt, but not all went forth heartily, and so, when wandering in the desert, some of them sighed after the leeks and onions,—the fleshpots of Egypt. Even so there are penitents who forsake sin, yet without forsaking their sinful affections; that is to say, they intend to sin no more, but it goes sorely against them to abstain from the pleasures of sin;—they formally renounce and forsake sinful acts, but they turn back many a fond lingering look to what they have left, like Lot’s wife as she fled from Sodom….. Such souls as I have described lose all the grace of their good deeds, which are probably few and feeble, through their spiritual languor.”

-St. Francis de Sales [4]

Remember repentance is the conviction and the actual directing the soul toward perfect contrition, and this perfect contrition is perfect love toward God and perfect love toward God in all human beings and his creation. This is when a soul is truly sorry for offending God and causing evil to people, simply because he or she loves God and sees other people as infinite treasures of God who are to be valued with true love. True repentance always has a complete desire to achieve absolute perfection in all the virtues, not just one virtue.

Over the ages, people have set up structures that facilitate evil thought processes, over passing times the hunger for shortcuts and self-gratification was passed on and bolder from one generation to the next and now, it has gotten to you, it didn’t just start here just with you. It slowly with its refined trend, groomed you into the shape of a person with a disorder. What then do you think your freedom will be about? A one time big bang freedom? No! You by your vice, disorder, or struggle with habitual sin, have been selected and destined now to work in the movement that would start-up, increase, manage, expand, and establish freedom from that “sin mindset”. Do not run away from it, it is now your call from God because it is in your selflessness that your holiness lies. So set up the media, the personalities, the channels, the blogs, the groups, the meetings, the societies, etc. expand them and get as many people on the bandwagon as you can.

Many people get stuck in habitual sin because they refuse to preach against the sins which they usually fall into out of fear of suffering rebukes, fear of being slandered as a two-faced hypocrite and the fear that they’ll actually like to commit that sin again sometime later without all these backlashes. We are not holy for ourselves, the reason we are holy is so that we can truly love because we cannot love without being holy. A holiness that is centred on ourselves will lead us to a stunted spirituality that has no true merit. You are to go out and proclaim holiness because it is about almighty God, His demand to you and command to preach it to the world, even if you struggle you must without hesitation condemn what is sinful and never make excuses for them.

Overcome habitual sins through spiritual direction

With this correct mindset, you should make it the greatest priority to find a good spiritual director and begin a more frequent confession and spiritual direction. You have to get on an accountability program by planning with a confessor to come as frequently as twice or three times a week to account for how the battles have been going and to form greater sincerity and a deeper appreciation for God and stronger continuous repentance. Also aside from the accountability, one should join spiritual support groups specific to helping people with vices and addictions. And as you continue in your battle, work to improve everywhere in your Christian life, do not fall for the trap (sophisticated temptation) of focusing every effort on just improving the vice or addiction alone, therefore, forgetting to gain greater fulfilment in other virtues, deeper experience of God’s love, special fervour in our relationship and communication with God and greater spiritual sacrifices and exercise programs for God, the Holy souls in purgatory, for sinners, friends and family, and reparation for sins.

Overcome habitual sins through having the right approach in this spiritual battle

Many a time people despair and fall in faith because they believe since we cannot be infinitely perfect in this life, why try so hard? Just accept being broken and go with the flow, just try to do some good things while doing also doing the bad ones and everything is alright. If you hear a teaching or preaching of holiness just agree along and shout amen but continue with all the bad and unrighteous things you do. This is a big problem of pride and despair. God demands perfection! Which means absolute sincerity in trying hardest to reach perfection.

Never stop making righteous and sincere promises to God because they help you be ashamed, regretful and repentant if you break them, they also give you strength and motivation not to fall when they are kept. Do not believe that your likelihood of breaking them breaks Gods heart rather it is your disbelief in His grace to aid you in keeping those promises and in His mercy to pardon a truly repentant heart that disheartens Him more. Never stop making righteous and sincere promises to God, it is only when you have stopped that you truly have become lost by distrusting and disbelieving in His grace and mercy. Never stop saying sorry, if you say you’re sorry then become truly sorry, be ashamed of the sin, hate it and desire that you’ll rather die than commit that sin again. So you make big moves to change your life, your psychology, your lifestyle and everything that could make that sin come up again. Say sorry and do the true work of changing your life, the only problem with saying sorry is when you do nothing that really helps change your life from falling into that habitual sin again. If you don’t know how to do the work of changing your life and lifestyle then seek a spiritual director. ALWAYS apologize, and have true sorrow for your sins and do the work of changing your life trust in God as you do this and move on with your life struggling for perfection that pleases Him. God does not get tired of forgiving us, it is we who get tired of asking God for mercy, it is we who get tired of repenting, it is we who fall into the sin of presumption and say “God will understand”.

Throughout life, the goal of every temptation is not the immediate variety of mortal or venial sin fallen into but a plan for the soul to finally plunge into despair or presumption in order to escape the tension built in the conscience. If a soul would meditate on overcoming presumption and despair in all its forms most especially the despair of acceptance of venial sins and imperfections, if the soul does this through God’s grace, it will surely attain heaven and sainthood. All the time on earth the soul is battling the plan for it to fall into presumption or despair.

We don’t improve when struggling against vice and addictions because we have a wrong belief that we are like angels and not like warriors or professional boxers and that God loves angels more than warriors. Through this wrong imagination, we feel like failures since we are supposed to be angels without internal wars, scars and battles, and since we the supposed “flawless angels” fall, then there is something seriously wrong with us and we cannot be truly holy because holiness and perfection is the state of our angelic flawlessness. This is entirely false because that is not what humans in this world are. This mindset is opposed to the true mindset we ought to have which is one of a boxer who by the power of God is battling the flesh, the world and the devil and definitely they may land some blows to you in the course of the fight but as long as we do not stay down by falling into presumption or despair then we are Children of God and even with our many falls we are perfect because our holiness is an action of God’s grace, love and mercy which is sufficient.

Imagine you were a professional boxer with a specific type of boxing style. You trained with your style of boxing for years because you believed it will take all the way to become the world heavyweight champion. So you now enter the tournament to become the world champion and you are fighting against several other boxers in order for you to get to the finals to challenge for the heavyweight championship belt. Sure enough, your fighting style is good and you use it to defeat many oppositions and people begin to say you really might go all the way to win the tournament but somewhere in the middle of the tournament after defeating more than 10 different oppositions you come up against a new one who has learned and mastered your fighting style and has created a new one that is so effective against your fighting style. And because of how so flawlessly his fighting style works against yours he defeats you, but because you have been such a great fighter the rules allow for you to challenge this fighter again in order to continue progressing. Will you challenge again after coming so far? I believe you would. And if you did, now that you know their style is definitely unshakable when you use your fighting style, will you use the same fighting style or will you try to add something new to your training that will help you develop a superior fighting style that may help you defeat him? The same is so with our lives, when we fall into vice or addiction it means our present attitude, mortification, prayer and spiritual exercises are not enough. We need to restrategize, change or add to what we are already doing so that we can overcome it, but we can no longer continue the same lifestyle and expect a different result. We must change our prayer life, mortification and tangible strategies to overcome, if not we will not achieve freedom. If you cannot think of strategies, prayers and mortification, contact your spiritual director or any reliable counsellor.

POINT 16: THE DEFORMATION IN THE SOUL: CRYSTALLIZATION OF PRIDE, INSINCERITY AND REBELLION WHERE THE POWERS OF THE SOUL (MEMORY, INTELLECT AND WILL) ARE CORRODED TO GROOM A STATE OF DESPAIR AGAINST GOD’S GRACE AND MERCY

Most people believe that the damages caused by sin in the corruption, and deadening of the soul, its powers, senses and conscience can only amount to a small problem that can be solved easily. So therefore we should take opportunities to sin now and repent later. To this we look at the words of our lady in her apparition at Fatima “many souls go to hell because they have no one to pray or make sacrifices for them” [5] Our Lady said this to the three little children, through this we understand that it is possible that a person can become reprobate to the extent they cannot move at all in holiness because they have indulged in sacrileges or other mortal sins so much that the powers of their soul are put in chains. These sins have seriously damaged the soul and made its sight of holiness blurred or blind and wounded the hearing of the conscience; this type of damage is easily caused by sacrileges or the habitual commission of mortal sins.

Such damaged souls develop spiritual, psychological and physiological problems and no longer have the disposition in themselves to truly understand or sufficiently desire repentance. They lose the disposition to be motivated by grace in the intellect and the will to move forward and be purified in reformation. For these types of people, their salvation now depends largely on others who through their prayers and mortification pass to their souls grace through sacrifice and good examples so that the damaged souls to once again see holiness as it really is in the life of the other holy ones, and then hear their conscience again and can once again have the ability to be able to decide to dispose themself to the grace of repentance or to remain in their self-indulgence.

In order to better understand this, we must begin with understanding the nature of man who is a soul. This being has three essential powers: the memory (which is now prone to fading due to the fallen human nature), the second “the will” which is the power to choose and third the intellect which carries the emotions, passions, reasoning and imagination. These three powers of the soul as much as they can be separately identified they are not independent, each one is heavily influenced by the other and they interact together to form a large part of the uniqueness of a human personality. Because of the nature of these interactions being the core formation of a human personality, whatever we do echoes through time to our whole personality, starting from the very intention, to the full consent, it goes beyond just an act of the moment because it touches all three powers of our soul, therefore, it shapes our personality, lives and therefore our destiny in varying degrees. What we feel always tries to affect and rule over what we chose to do, but what we eventually choose to do touches our soul even when we have not yet done it. Therefore what we choose to do matters a whole lot even if how we feel is greatly against it. If we choose to do what is evil or think about what is evil then that is what will grow inside us and we will keep working against the light of holiness God has placed in and around us and we will out of the abundance of what is in our heart bear fruits of evil this is how we fall into cycles of vices and addictions.

As stated before the law of God is not an external thing as usually imagined by people, it is not just something God or the teachers from God imagined and invented. They are enshrined in the very essence of the power of existence released from God to all things He created because they are the external glory God releases and uses to make any created thing that exists, and these external glory which God releases are the order and standards of life and all reality. When a person sins against those orders or laws, he slanders God the source of life and the order, and breaks, damages or reduces that particular constituent of God’s external glory in himself along with some other glories interconnected to it and then he indirectly affects the other humans as we are linked together in our mystical communal life. When we sin we first slander God because He is the source of life and the foundation and sustenance of grace and righteousness. Therefore, when we sin we expel from our lives or damage our relationship with Him who is righteousness itself, thereby insulting Him, abandoning him and being completely ungrateful to Him. Then second, we damage our souls and the souls of those around us directly or indirectly. Directly by bringing in the knowledge and experience of evil into ours and their souls and this evil fights against our state of virtues and glorifies our love for other things over our love for God thereby corroding the soul and leaving it attached in degrees to what is sinful. Third, we indirectly cause more damage by the sins of omission which then follow as a result of the missing glories of grace in the soul (virtues) which have been reduced by the sins committed.

When God forgives us, He also gives us grace to unite ourselves with Christ and then mend those damages we have done to ourselves and others around us. This is the true righteous love and mercy of God. While forgiveness from God pardons the slander and insult toward Him, the deprived external glory of God and negative effects remains in the person who sins and other people and things they have affected. He or she must by God’s given grace, repair such damages.

Overcome habitual sins through purifying your Memory and intellect

• Purify your memory and intellect and build strong bonds with christian friends

You must begin by removing from your life every form of disedifying media which has dominated your memory and is affecting your intellect. That is, you have to destroy every movie, song, series, unfollow unchristian pages and influencers on social media, destroy immoral and immodest books, magazines, clothing and avoid every conversation or relationship which continues to bring evil into your memory. You must desperately do this in order to purify your memory and intellect, if you do not purify your memory of being dominated with the experience of bad choices, you will continue to play out those acts which have dominated your memory as that cycle of addiction. You should not just remove every source of evil and disedifying memory, you must replace these evil memories with new thoughts and memories by flooding your mind with edifying media; movies of life of saints, books of saint similar to you life, audio sermons, following Christian pages and influencers on social media, making good Christian friends and growing with them, having edifying conversations and spending time hearing from God.

Overcome habitual sins through fighting against the evil of myopia of hating yourself completely and avoiding God

Also when you pass from desperation to freedom from habitual sin, it would happen by finally overcoming the sophisticated temptations of anti-psychology and self-glooming myopia from struggling with and allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by the thoughts of sin and temptation, which results in low contemplation on God for His lights, and this increases anti-psychological pressure and feelings of powerlessness and brokenness. This makes a person feel they are not so good so the soul goes into temptation rigged to fail because temptations become a pressure release point and the will for resistance is malnourished of motivation of grace and so the soul ends up feeling even more prone to it’s destruction due to this sophisticated temptation which would have been resolved through contemplation.

Anti-psychology and the misunderstanding of disordered desire builds up an unhealthy an unholy tension and weakens a person’s faith and love by making them believe that they are evil for having those temptations and so they believe that they are unholy and they surely fall for temptations of immorality because they have initially fallen for the sophisticated temptation of believing that they are not holy or they are not so good. And this removes the motivation and the inspiration or grace and facilitates the person’s fall into the temptations set by our fallen world.

• You Must give up the victim of circumstance mindset and take responsibility

Let us all who struggle stop claiming victim to our choices and actions. There are serious psychological effects of doing that on the soul. We must undergo the therapeutic work of removing the victim mindset from our hearts and establish an open sincere acceptance and responsibility of our actions in Light of God who we offend but understands and is happy to always forgive a repentant heart. Let us also engage ourselves in spiritual and psychological schemes and programmes for rehabilitation according to specific corrosion in the soul.

• Go for counseling or therapy from catholic therapist or conselors that are based in helping christians cope

In cases of really difficult experiences and or strange psychological attachments or triggers, you should see a Catholic therapist our counsellor who would help out with sorting and dealing with the effects of such experiences.

Overcome habitual sins through purifying and developing the strength of your Will

• Desperation to be free and mortification of the body

When addictions to sins and a life of vice or vices are formed in a soul, it means that a disorder of pride and rebellion has crystallized deep inside the soul. These addictions and vices are a sickness born and groomed through deep-seated pride and selfishness which has concentrated into a strong rebellion against God’s life of selflessness and sacrifice. Saint Paul said, “If you live according to to the flesh you shall die, but if by the Holy Spirit, you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live” (Romans 8:13). We all have only two options; to live according to how we please and feel or to live by the holy spirit and mortify our selfish desires. The reason is that the nature of we human beings is fallen, that is, it is flawed until we unite with God’s infinite love in eternity. Therefore you have two options in life; to live according to the fallen and flawed human nature or to live by the Holy spirit and continuously mortify the fallen nature we possess. You learn and get better at things by constantly training for them, practising for them and constantly doing them over and over again. Sin is the “exercise” of love of selfish desires over the love of God while in a natural way mortification is the “practice” and “exercise of the love of God over the self and selfish desires.

For example, the most common abounding sin are sins immodesty and immorality against purity, and these are strongly linked to a person’s attachment to their taste. This means their disordered attachment to getting things the way one exactly wants it, likes it and enjoys it, especially in food and entertainment. People who fall into a terrible struggle against continually committing these sins should go into desperate mortification programmes where they give up their movies, songs, series, social media, games, attachment to flavoured foods, and comfort of sleep by reduced sleep time to increase prayer time and sleeping on hard discomforting materials. You must desperately choose to let your body suffer so that you stop the habit of bowing down to every impulse your bodily desire bring your way.

• Philsiological necesities in line with purifying the will

Also, you have to train your will by keeping to what you are righteously supposed to do in taking proper care of yourself. If you must be on medications as prescribed by the doctors, then do not ignore them, same with the minimum amount of sleep, food and exercise you need to be involved in daily so as to have a healthy body and reduce the possibility of being tempted due to physiological imbalances.

LAST NOTE

Don’t let anything steal your zeal towards being in love with God and stop making excuses, there is more than enough written here for you to be helped if you really want to be helped. You’ll only remain the same because you are insincere and secretly enjoy indulging and being controlled by your disorder period!

What offends Jesus more, is not that we have sinned, but that we do not trust in His infinite Divine Mercy to totally and lovingly, forgive us the way that he has said he would, and we do not turn to Him and trust in His omnipotent power to heal us from these wounds that sin has caused, to help us and make us better, one step at a time.

We may want immediate action, and we want seems to be the way that we want them to be but God has the process that he wants to heal us with, he will not just take us to the end, he wants to take us through the process, because that is what love is and we have to truly become people who can really love. Therefore we can not skip the process, without it we cannot be purified and be able to enter into God’s life. And so God out of his infinite love and mercy has permitted that we should go through these things. And as humbling and humiliating, as terrifying and horrible as it can seem, we need to trust God and take one step at a time as we head towards perfection and not rush things. It is annoying sometimes to fall,  It’s annoying sometimes to continue to see those weaknesses in you and you continue to act out, continue to be stupid, but yet the hand of God is still upon that situation drop the pride and selfishness, then submit to God in life-altering desperation and you’ll be on your way to being pleasing to God again.

Remember this most especially, it is not just one thing that would take you through to freedom from vice, it is the cumulative effect of persistence in carrying out and combining the truths that have been revealed to you here throughout this chapter that would bring about any true progress. Therefore reread this frequently and have a list of realistic mortifications, milestones and aspirations you are constantly persistently working on that you came to you from studying this chapter. Never abandon those resolutions you have made rather continue to improve them, work on them and add new ones to them with Gods grace and the combination and persistence through God’s grace will bring about progress slowly like an athlete gets better without immediately noticing but is definitely getting better by being committed to their drills and training.  

Reference

1. Address of his holiness Pope John Paul II to the diplomatic corps, Thursday 10 January 2002 http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/2002/january/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20020110_diplomatic-corps.html
2. Quotes from saints by Pradeep Augustine; http://www.catholicgallery.org/quotes/saints-quotes-7/
3. The Pilokalia, Volume 1 by G. E. H. Palmer, Faber & Faber publishing, 2011.
4. Introduction to the Devout Life by St.Francis de Sales
5. The message of Fatima; https://www.rosary-center.org/fatimams.htm