I’ve had a partial box of cigarettes in my bag for a few days now. Why? In my case, it’s because we’ve entered Advent, a penitential season, an appropriate time to give things up.
It’s not that I’ve given up smoking (or ever started!)! But a friend I’ve been meeting for faith classes wanted to quit smoking and we decided on the First Sunday of Advent as an appropriate time to kick the habit. In the spirit of solidarity and a desire to be a “penitent for others” (as our Constitutions recommend we do!), I’m making a little sacrifice of my own: foregoing sweets.
Still, all this does not explain the presence of 15 menthol cigarettes in my bag. My friend gave them to me the day after she quit smoking – because she hadn’t quit! Just having the cigarettes in her house made it too easy to forget her decision to quit, so she told me that she wanted to give them to God, and I was the next best thing. Ha!
I was thinking about it later, and wished that I had some cigarettes that I could just give away. It’s really not that hard to give up treats in our way of life (even though I do have a mega sweet tooth and a definite attachment to sweets!), since it’s not like we choose to have dessert just any night anyway. But there are lots of other habits that are a bit harder to kick: impatience, judgment, self-centeredness. These don’t come in boxes, aren’t pulled out only on special occasions, and can’t be given away to a trusty friend. These habits can, ultimately, only be given away to God, and given again and again and again.
I have a sneaking suspicion that some of my annoyance with these attachments and sins comes from the fact that I know that I’ll never be totally free of them on this side of heaven. God uses my failure to “arrive” at perfect patience and tender understanding (a.k.a. LOVE) to humble me and teach me how very little I am without Him. All of this is, ultimately, helping me to kick my (and Eve’s) most primordially ingrained sinful habit: independence, wanting to be “like God” without God.
So I’ll keep carrying around the cigarettes until I find someone who smokes menthols to give them to – and I’ll let them remind me of God’s patient love, ordered to my salvation. He is willing to wait our whole life long for us to be ready to give up our independence and allow Him to be All in all.
-Sr. Agnes Therese Davis, T.O.R.
