Addiction & Grace
Living purgatory on earth
Walking through the Tenderloin district in San Francisco each morning on my way to work, I often see the same people. Some lie on the sidewalks, some shout into the air, and some simply stare ahead. I wish I could say I always meet these moments with compassion. Too often, I find myself making judgments instead. Even my best thoughts seem to come more out of discomfort than love.
None of this makes me proud, but all of it forces me to confront a dangerous illusions: I have my life under control. I’m different from the people I’m passing by.
When we look honestly, we realize addiction isn’t limited to substances. It’s any pattern that promises comfort or escape while quietly enslaving us. That’s why addiction is so deeply connected to grace. It reveals, with painful clarity, that we are not our own saviors.
The Church teaches that purgatory is where the soul is purified to receive God’s love more fully. And purgatory isn’t only something that happens after death. It’s something we live now, in the hard process of learning to let go of illusions, control, and self-sufficiency. The purgatory of addiction, in all its forms, is the slow unlearning of the lie that we are in charge.
Every breath we take reminds us that our lives are not our own. We didn’t choose to be born, and we don’t decide when our final breath comes. The simple act of breathing can teach us everything about dependence. Each inhale is a gift received. Each exhale is a release of what was never ours to hold.
I suppose what I am trying to say is that I believe grace begins where control ends. The poor, the addicted, and the broken live this truth every day. They are our mirrors, our teachers, and our fellow travelers through purgatory on the way to heaven that is not a reward for the perfect, but a homecoming for those who have learned to surrender and let God love them as they are.
Fr. John Gribowich
