Day 7: The knot of addiction and habit

On the seventh day of the Mary Undoer of Knots Novena, we approach the knot that is perhaps the most difficult to untie by our own efforts: the knot of addiction, of compulsive habit, of the pattern of sin that has worn a groove in our daily life and that returns despite our resolutions. Mary, who is the help of those who turn to her, is uniquely able to obtain for us the grace to break what we cannot break ourselves.

Today's meditation

The Catholic spiritual tradition has long understood that some sins, by repetition, take on a quasi-mechanical character in the soul. The technical word in the moral theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas is vitium, vice, the habituated disposition to sin formed by the repeated election of disordered acts. Vice, like virtue, is a habitus: a stable disposition acquired by repeated action and not easily removed by single acts of contrary willing.

What this means in practical terms is that addiction (whether to alcohol, pornography, anger, food, gambling, work, technology, or any other compulsive object) cannot usually be broken by mere willpower. The will is itself bound by the habit. Catholic spiritual theology, as developed by writers as different as Saint Augustine in the Confessions (book 8) and the modern recovery movements, holds that the breaking of an addiction requires a power higher than the addicted will, and that this power becomes available through grace, the sacraments, the support of spiritual community, and the intercession of the saints.

Mary's intercession in the case of addiction is particularly powerful. Catholic recovery ministries (the Calix Society and many parish-based recovery groups) place Marian devotion at the center of the long process of healing. The Mother who undoes knots is the Mother who unties the knot of the addiction itself, often slowly, often through the means of grace mediated through Catholic friendships, sacraments, and disciplines.

Today's intention

Today, name to Mary the addictions or compulsive patterns in your own life or the life of someone you love:

• The drinking that has become unmanageable.
• The pornography that has trained the imagination away from God.
• The phone or screen habit that has stolen hours of every day.
• The gambling, the eating, the spending, the working.
• The anger I lose myself in.
• The pride and self-hatred that I feed.

If these are addictions in your own life, today is also the day to consider what concrete step toward help you may be called to take: a conversation with your priest or pastor, an Alcoholics Anonymous or a Catholic equivalent, a counselor, a confession after long absence.

The principal prayer to Our Lady Undoer of Knots

Virgin Mary, Mother who never refuses to come to the aid of a child in need, Mother whose hands never cease to serve your beloved children because they are moved by the divine love and immense mercy that exists in your heart, cast your compassionate eyes upon me and see the snarl of knots that exist in my life. You know very well how desperate I am, my pain and how I am bound by these knots.

Mary, Mother to whom God entrusted the undoing of the knots in the lives of His children, I entrust into your hands the ribbon of my life. No one, not even the evil one himself, can take it away from your precious care. In your hands there is no knot that cannot be undone.

Powerful Mother, by your grace and intercessory power with your Son and my Liberator, Jesus, take into your hands today this knot (name it). I beg you to undo it for the glory of God, once for all. You are my hope.

O my Lady, you are the only consolation God gives me, the fortification of my feeble strength, the enrichment of my destitution, and, with Christ, the freedom from my chains. Hear my plea. Keep me, guide me, protect me, O safe refuge!

Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for me. Amen.

The first three decades of the Rosary

Pray the first three decades, or three Hail Marys and a Glory Be.

Reflection

Catholic spirituality holds a particular hope for the soul caught in addiction: the hope that the very weakness of the addiction becomes, in time, the means of a deeper humility and a deeper trust in God. "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Saint Paul's word to the Corinthians is one of the principal Catholic texts in the spiritual reading of human limitation. The thorn that is not removed becomes the school in which the soul learns to live by grace alone.

Many Catholics who have been delivered from serious addictions testify, after the fact, that the deliverance came not as a single dramatic miracle but as a gradual undoing of the knot through persistent recourse to the sacraments, faithful Marian devotion, the support of a Catholic recovery group, and the patient acceptance of the years required. This is the typical pattern. The Mary Undoer of Knots devotion is meant to be a part of this lifelong work, not a magic cure that obviates the means of grace.

If you are praying this novena for someone you love who is in active addiction, the discipline is also sustained: the prayer for the loved one over the long haul, the Mass offered for the loved one, the patience with the slow path of recovery. Mary's intercession is real and effective, but it operates in time and through means, not by miraculous fiat in most cases.

Closing prayers

Conclude with the Memorare and:

Holy Mary, Undoer of the Knot of addiction, pray for us.