Before recovery, we found ourselves confused and enthralled by the many false idols of our compulsions, addictions, unhealthy attachments, and the delusions that spawned them. These idols effectively replaced God and became a destructive counterfeit for true religion, true spirituality, and true happiness. In the words of Gerald G. May, psychiatrist and theologian, “Spiritually, addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry. The objects of our addictions become our false gods. These are what we worship, what we attend to, where we give our time and energy, instead of love. Addiction, then, displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest true desire” (Addiction and Grace: Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions). In recovery, we are in a very real way evangelized by others who witness to us their experience, strength, and hope. We undergo a conversion from our idols by working the Twelve Steps, engaging in sponsorship, serving others, and receiving Christ’s sacramental healing with humble, contrite, and charitable hearts. Our wills become more aligned with our God-given “religious instinct” as we come into right relationship with our Higher Power, the Most Holy Trinity, and live a life increasingly formed in selfless love.

I often hear people say, “I’m spiritual, just not religious” or “I believe in God, but I don’t need organized religion.” Such comments represent a false dichotomy and are at best a fundamental misunderstanding of the “religious instinct,” of the soul’s overarching and existential need to worship God in order to be fully alive. And at worst, they reveal a certain degree of pride that prioritizes self before God, exposing a conditional willingness to accept God only on one’s own terms. Such pride—“my will, not Thine, be done!”—is what gets us into trouble in the first place with sin and addiction. Our English word “religion” comes from the Latin “religio,” meaning to bind back to, reconnect with, rechoose, or pay careful attention to the sacred in terms of primarily liturgical worship. In other words, one’s subjective “spiritual” experiences are only fully meaningful in the context of organized and intentional “religious” worship. So never forget that when you turn your will and life over to the care of God as you understand Him (Step 3), you are doing so not on your own terms and not to the god of your own creation, but rather to God who is ultimately beyond all comprehension, expectations, and manipulation in His mystery, majesty, and glory, and truly is, as my own sponsor always likes to say, “the God of my very limited understanding” (Paul L.). The only adequate response as creatures, sinners, recovering addicts, and beloved children of God is humility, love, and worship.

Reflection Questions

• How do you understand the “religious instinct” in your own life? How did this instinct become confused and go awry in your life of addiction and become a form of idolatry?
• Describe how you have come to understand that being spiritual and being religious are necessarily connected. Explain how liturgical and sacramental worship of God is essential to your program of recovery.

Daily Mass Readings

First Reading: Acts 17:15, 22—18:1
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13, 14
Gospel: John 16:12-15

Reflection by Pete S.