The bondage of sin is a form of slavery to the desires of the flesh. When you put the will of God for your life beneath your own needs and desires for your own selfish wants, whether they be power, money, honor, prestige, and such, you are suffering from the bondage of sin.
What to do about the Bondage of Sin?
Many people struggle to understand why wants and desires, when not done according to God’s will, can actually become a form of bondage. Sin has a way of hooking a soul and causing a form of spiritual blindness that can ultimately harden the heart. If you are struggling with a habitual sin, this prayer by St. John Henry Newman is a beautiful meditative prayer for repentance called the Bondage of Sin. There are many saints in the history of the Church who have written about the Kingdom of God. What is this Kingdom? Jesus taught us the Our Father prayer, and in it He instructed us to pray, “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.” When a soul really understands that the Will of God in his life can bring to him the Kingdom of God in his soul, he will gladly put Christ first. One must first understand the role our desires have in our sinful habits.
How do I stop having sinful desires?
The soul aligns itself to the crucified Christ, in fidelity. The soul understands that it is by his own sin that Christ was tortured and crucified. When you contemplate your sins and how they caused Jesus Christ to suffer, out of love for you and you alone, you grow a deep sorrow for having committed them.
The only way to overcome the bondage of sin is to surrender to the will of God and repent. When you repent and begin to desire a true relationship with Christ where His will is your will, then you have allowed the Kingdom of God to be done in your life on Earth as it is already done in Heaven with the saints. So we pray to overcome the bondage of sin and to grow in virtue. We ask the Lord in adoration to give us the grace we need to desire the will of God in our life, and He grants it in his generosity.
For if you live according to the flesh, you shall die: but if by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh, you shall live. For whosoever are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For you have not received the spirit of bondage again in fear: but you have received the spirit of adoption of sons, whereby we cry: Abba (Father). For the Spirit himself giveth testimony to our spirit that we are the sons of God. And if sons, heirs also; heirs indeed of God and joint heirs with Christ: yet so, if we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified with him.
The Bondage of Sin: a Meditative
Prayer for Habitual Sin
by Saint John Henry Newman
You, O my Lord and God, you alone are strong; you alone are holy!
You are the Sanctus Deus, Sanctus fortis -“Holy God, holy and strong!” You are the sanctity and the strength of all things.
No created nature has any stay or subsistence in itself but crumbles and melts away, if you are not with it to sustain it.
My God, you are the strength of the angels, of the saints in glory, of holy men on earth. No being has any sanctity or any strength apart from you.
My God, I wish to adore you as such. I wish with all my heart to understand and to confess this great truth, that not only are you almighty, but that there is no might at all, or power, or strength, anywhere but in you.
My God, if you are the strength of all spirits, oh, how preeminently are you my strength! Oh, how true it is, so that nothing is more so, that I have no strength but in you! I feel intimately, O my God, that whenever I am left to myself, I go wrong. As sure as a stone falls down to the earth if it is let go, so surely my heart and spirit fall down hopelessly if they are let go by you. You must uphold me by your right hand, or I cannot stand.
How strange it is, but how true, that all my natural tendencies are toward sloth, toward excess, toward neglect of religion, toward neglect of prayer, toward love of the world, not toward love of You, or love of sanctity, or love of self-governance. I approve and praise what I do not do. My heart runs after vanities, and I tend to death; I tend to corruption and dissolution, apart from you, Deus immortalis.
My God, I have had experience enough what a dreadful bondage sin is. If you are away, I find I cannot keep myself- however I wish it- and am in the hands of my own self-will, pride, sensuality, and selfishness. And they prevail with me more and more every day, until they are irresistible. In time the old Adam within me gets so strong that I become a mere slave. I confess things to be wrong which nevertheless I do. I bitterly lament over my bondage, but I cannot undo it.
Oh, what tyranny is sin! It is a heavy weight that cripples me- and what will be the end of it? By your all-precious merits, by your almighty power, I entreat you, O my Lord, to give me life and sanctity and strength!
Deus sanctus, give me holiness; Deus fortis, give me strength; Deus immortalis, give me perseverance. Sanctus Deus, Sanctus fortis, Sanctus immortalis, miserere nobis (have mercy upon me).
Amen
On Sin and Loving Christ
“When we are in sin, our soul is all diseased, all rotten; it is pitiful. The thought that the good God sees it ought to make it enter into itself. And then, what pleasure is there in sin? None at all. We have frightful dreams that the devil is carrying us away, that we are falling over precipices. Put yourself on good terms with God; have recourse to the Sacrament of Penance; you will sleep as quietly as an angel. You will be glad to waken in the night, to pray to God; you will have nothing but thanksgivings on your lips; you will rise towards Heaven with great facility, as an eagle soars through the air.” St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney
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