from matthew lickona's blog (the author of swimming with scapulars, a book on the penster's wish list, tyvm...)

And if the embrace of faith is not a cure-all, neither is its practice. The longtime Catholic cannot say with confidence that he is free of vice simply because his guilt has been removed in confession. Often, the vice remains; often, it endures. There should be no wonder in this. “Don’t ever be surprised by sin,” one of my teachers once told me. “Rather, be surprised, delighted and grateful when sin is overcome.” The wonder, it seems to me after just thirty-odd years of living, is that there is any hope for change, that nature and grace may so conspire as to lift a man out of the ruts he has dug for himself. The movement, if my own attempts are any indication, can be as dramatic as any conversion. The difference is that there is no moment of transformation – no waters of baptism, no graceful words, no welcoming community of faith. Just ground reclaimed, gradually and painfully, from the unsleeping enemy.