Fr Billy Swan
‘Bad Habits’ is a hit song written and produced by Ed Sheeran. It is a song about how vices can take control of ones’ life. Sheeran has always been honest about his experiences with substance abuse. In 2017, he shared on Jonathan Ross that at one point in his life he started slipping into the pitfalls of fame with forms of addiction. In the song, he sings of not being able to say ‘No’ and how his ‘bad habits lead to late nights endin' alone…Conversations with a stranger I barely know…Swearin' this will be the last, but it probably won't…My bad habits lead to wide eyes stare into space…And I know I'll lose control of the things that I say…Yeah, I was lookin' for a way out, now I can't escape’.
When we listen to people share their stories of addiction in word or song, there is a risk of us feeling righteous and removed from them. In our pride we might think that ‘they are addicts and I’m not’ or ‘this will never happen to me’ or ‘it’s their own fault’. But addiction effects all of us. We are all addicted to something and we can all become addicts more easily than we think. It just takes a little self-awareness and humility to know this.
On this Sunday before Lent begins, we mark what we call ‘Temperance Sunday’. It is a call away from addiction – not to indulge in excess but to practice discipline in our lives with the motive of putting God back in first place. Temperance is about removing our dependence on people and things that can easily replace God himself.
This call to temperance is timely and needed. The moral situation in Ireland has changed dramatically in the last few decades. Many people celebrated the end of what they thought were oppressive rules imposed on people by the Church and religion. A new freedom was being talked about as the moral codes of previous generations were loosened. And so, in the name of that freedom, drink and drugs became more available. With the help of the internet, sexual freedom was introduced with no boundaries or responsibility. The knock-on effect of these cultural developments is that people can become addicted to various behaviours and activities in a way that destroys lives. The evidence is everywhere.
The bad habits that Ed Sheeran talks about lead only to sadness.
In ‘Bad Habits’ Ed Sheeran is an example of someone who painfully discovered that instead of their indulgence bringing them freedom, they became slaves to what they were addicted to. He speaks with great authority of the value of temperance, discipline and fasting to emerge from their slavery and live again in freedom.
God our Father wants us to be free. When he gives us the commandments in Scripture and in the teachings of the Church, he does so to protect our freedom and not to take it away.
Temperance is not a cool or trendy idea. It is perceived as restrictive, a sort of kill-joy or spoil sport. Nothing could be further from the truth. Temperance brings balance and prevents excess getting a grip. That is why the season of that begins this week is so important as a time of training, of discipline and sacrifice. It is a time to listen to the wisdom of God’s Word that says: ‘Do not follow your base desires but restrain your appetites’ (Sirach 18:30). Lent is a time for all that Jesus talks about in the Gospel this Sunday – to support one another along the journey of growth and commitment; to take personal responsibility for the splinters and planks in our eyes; to feed our eyes, ears and souls with everything that is positive, true, beautiful, good and loving; to avoid anything that is dark, negative, cynical, false, sinful or filthy.
Friends. Don’t just drift into this Lent. Welcome it and together let us commit to some form of temperance. Temperance saves us from our ‘Bad Habits’ so that we may continue to enjoy the freedom of the children of God.
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