I apologize for weird postings today. The Net is off and on and sometimes I have no idea of things that are saved until I go back when the Net is on again.
If readers follow the perfection series, they will see much on the breaking of venial sin.
Venial sin can be habitual sin. If "automatic", it is most likely something learned in childhood and needs great care to root it out.
If it is sin learned as an adult, through habit, one can unlearn sin. Remember, only the perfect see God and venial sin must be purged from the soul as well as the tendencies to sin.
Venial sin interferes with the work of the building of the Kingdom of God. Why?
Looking at Garrigou-Lagrange, one reads this:
This purification removes many other defects in our relations with our neighbor or in respect to our duties of state: a certain natural rudeness, which leads to impatience; an a most unconscious secret ambition, the cause of many disorders and divisions among people; and also a lack of interest in the occasionally great needs of our afflicted neighbor who turns to us for help. It is in this state that those who have the duty of caring devotedly for others, possess a deeper understanding of Christ's words: "The good shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth; and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep." (2) To profit by these words, we should ask the Lord to give us an increase of true zeal, the patient, gentle, disinterested zeal which draws life from God to give it in greater measure to our neighbor.
Even small faults can cause divisions among peoples. Dying to self and giving up the ego kills sin and the tendencies to sin.
Garrigou-Lagrange also writes of the purification of groups-in persecutions. For us readers, we have to pay attention to this fact.
In connection with this subject, it should be noted that there are also at times collective purifications, like persecutions, from which the soul must know how to draw profit. On such occasions the heroic degree of the virtues becomes necessary; one is in the happy necessity of becoming a saint in order not to be lost. Those who seem fairly good in prosperity are often weak and cowardly in these great difficulties; others, on the contrary, reveal their true character on these occasions. These grave moments should lead us to make the following salutary reflection: true sanctity does not require a lesser purification in outwardly calm periods than in periods troubled by persecution. The saints who lived in the calmest periods of the life of the Church had their interior trials, without which their souls would not have attained to the perfect purity which God willed to see in them.
