Once we have discovered our predominant fault, we have to endeavour to cultivate the virtue most opposed to it. But it is just here that the difficulty begins; for surely I have tried over and over again to compass this and have failed. What is a virtue? There is this difference between a good action and a virtue, that a good action may be quite isolated, whereas a virtue is a definite habit established in the will. So in the same fashion a vice is an established habit of wrongdoing. It is possible for me thus to do good, to tell the truth, be charitable, patient, without really having the virtues of truth or charity or patience. What, then, do we mean by an established habit? What is a habit? Of course, we have a vague idea that it means we have got into a way of doing certain things and have got the knack of them; and certainly it is difficult to describe in other words this apparently simple thing. However, we may start by saying that a habit does not incline us to do any thing, does not give us a push in its direction; but once we have made up our minds to do it, we find that the fact of the habit enables us to do the thing much more easily, promptly, without friction. Thus, supposing I have obtained somehow the habit of being tidy, then it is much more easy for me to seize hold of a confused mess and put it into order: I have such a horror of untidiness and such a custom of putting everything in its place that it becomes much more easy for me to do it than it would be for others who had no habit of the kind. But I must realize that having the habit does not make me tidy, but only makes it considerably easier to be tidy. In other words, to make use of the expression of psychologists, a habit does not force the will to act, but enables it to act with greater smoothness.
This will be more apparent, perhaps, if I try to see how a habit is formed. Let me take a material habit, a habit of the body, so that by visible things I may the more clearly understand things invisible. I am learning to shoot. First I shall be trained probably at a stationary target. Slowly and deliberately I take my aim for firing, until in process of time I have got my eye into the way of it and find I can score a good number of "bulls." Then, perhaps, I am taken out to the moving target, or the clay pigeon, and finally to the actual flying bird. But in the meanwhile an extraordinary change has taken place. At first I was very slow and deliberate in taking aim; now I shoot at once, lifting the gun, aiming, firing, all within a few fractions of a second. Or, again, a very favourite example is the simple dressing in the morning. As a child it was an intensely laborious process, requiring at first the constant assistance of the nurse to pilot me through the vast array of garments with tapes and buttons. If every morning the same efforts had to be made as I had then, my day's work would never get done. The toddling of a child is strenuous to it, not simply because its limbs are weak, but because the effort at balancing is a tremendous strain upon its energy, which, if it continued all through life, would make all walking intolerable. It is to be noticed that what has happened in each case is this: from effort I have passed to effortless action at first slow and deliberate, with attention required so as to be certain of every step in the process; then a stage when effort slips from the action, and by a sort of instinct swiftly, without thought, as it appears, we do promptly, easily, and without difficulty, what we have learnt by habit. Habit, therefore, is simply a faculty of our nature whereby by repeated action we acquire an ease in movement, etc., which does away with effort.
Now it is just this that we require so incessantly in our spiritual life. For us the great trouble is the determined efforts that have to be made: we find the struggle so fierce that in despair we relinquish the effort altogether. We should remember that at the beginning there is bound to be extreme difficulty, extreme deliberation, extreme slowness: it is only gradually that we shall find it possible to lay aside effort and fall into the pleasant lines of habit. But what a gain to be able to hand over to mere instinct (it is not really that) what had first been so tiring a task. It will be useful for me to think over the three rules that are given, so that in the formation of the habit of goodness that is most opposed to my besetting sin, I may gradually, positively, set up something really efficient. These rules are: (a) As far as possible to accumulate circumstances such as will make the forming of the habit least of all interfered with to avoid, for example, those places and people whose proximity I find to be on the whole tending to make me break it: in simpler words, let me avoid the occasions of sin. (b) Never to allow exceptions till the habit has been firmly established; to beware, above all, of that very deceitful excuse, "Just this once," for that phrase is never accurate: "just this once" leads easily to many other times. (c) To find every opportunity for exercising these habits; do not let me wait for the opportunities to arise, but let me go out to seek them, for it is clear that in order to establish these habits by means of repeated act, I require to exercise the acts frequently, and the only way to achieve this is to go out of my way to find these opportunities.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.