Overcoming Bad Habits
For the last several years, my wife and I have talked and talked about the need to get healthier. We wanted to eat better and exercise more. Several times we began our efforts with the very best of intentions but soon fell back into bad habits. Why couldn’t we do better?
The answer is actually pretty simple. Our efforts didn’t bear fruit because we were not willing to make any real and lasting changes to our lifestyles. We wanted to lose weight but were not willing to change our bad habits of unhealthy food and little or no exercise. As the kids say, “Duh.”
This same scenario often plays out in our spiritual lives. Prayer is dry so we stop praying. Mass is boring so we stop going. Security feels good so we work even harder to make more money, sometimes at the expense of our families and our own souls. It all spirals out of control. So what do we do to reverse these trends? We fight against them. We hit back. We do the opposite.
Agere contra is a spiritual concept drawn from the spiritual writings of St. Ignatius Loyola. The phrase simply means, “to act against,” and it involves consciously choosing to act against one’s negative inclinations or disordered attachments in order to align more closely with God’s will. Agere contra is about recognizing those tendencies within ourselves that lead us away from God, and then deliberately acting in opposition to them.
Here are a few examples of ways to practice agere contra. If these suggestions seem like common sense that’s because in many ways they are just that. But that doesn’t make them easy.
Times of Dryness in Prayer
During periods of spiritual dryness, prayer can feel like a burden rather than joyful communion with God. If we find ourselves struggling to pray or if our times of prayer seem meaningless, it can be tempting to give up. Here are some ways to work against that:
- Commit to regular prayer. Even when you don’t feel like praying, set a fixed time each day for prayer and stick to it. Acting against the inclination to avoid prayer helps maintain your spiritual discipline.
- Change it up. Try different forms of prayer such as meditative reading of Scripture, the Rosary, or contemplative silence. Acting against monotony can re-energize your prayer life.
- Seek community and guidance. Join a prayer group or find a prayer partner. Seek guidance from a spiritual director. Acting against isolation by seeking support and accountability can renew your enthusiasm for prayer.
Times of Battling Sin
Sinful habits and tendencies can be deeply ingrained, making them difficult to overcome. Agere contra provides a strategy for combatting sin by actively choosing the opposite of sinful inclinations.
- Practice virtue. Identify the virtues that counteract your particular sins. For example, if you struggle with anger, practice patience and kindness deliberately.
- Offer it up. Engage in small acts of self-denial or sacrifice that contradict your sinful inclinations. If you tend to be greedy, act against it by giving generously to others.
- Confess it. Regular confession is a way to act against the tendency to hide or rationalize sin, fostering a habit of humility and repentance.
The best story I ever heard about fighting back against the ways we sin came from a friend who told me about an experience he had in the confessional. After confessing a sin he had confessed many times before, he asked the priest: “How can I stop committing this sin?” The priest’s answer was direct and forceful. He said: “Just stop.” As simple as that sounds, that piece of common sense was what my friend needed to hear.
Sometimes we need to act against what we normally do. Habits and routines that leave no time for God are out of line from what God is asking of us. Ask yourself: Are my habits leading me toward or away from God? And who’s in control of that? The answer, of course, is that we are. We get to decide how we spend our days.
It’s not all beyond our control. We’re not helpless. We can do better, but it will take work and commitment.
Don’t we owe the same kind of common-sense choices to God that we make for ourselves?
