James K. A. Smith in chapter 1 of you are what you love (Brazos Press: Grand Rapids, MI. 2016.)

Smith writes:

[Jesus] asks, "What do you want?" This is the most incisive, piercing question Jesus can ask of us precisely because we are what we want. (p. 1-2)

As Blaise Pascal put it in his famous wager: "You have to wager. It is not up to you, you are already committed." You can't not bet your life on something. You can't not be headed somewhere. We live leaning forward, bent on arriving at the place we long for. (p. 10)

We adopt ways of life that are indexed to such visions of the good life, not usually because we "think through" our options but rather because some picture captures our imagination....We aren't really motivated by abstract ideas or pushed by rules and duties. Instead some panoramic tableau of what looks like flourishing has an alluring power that attracts us, drawing us toward it, and we thus live and work toward that goal. (p. 11-12)

Virtues, quite simply, are good moral habits....Virtues thus are different from moral laws or rules, which are external stipulations of the good. In fact, as Thomas Aquinas points out, there is an inversely proportionate relationship between virtue and the law: the more virtuous someone is -- that is, the more they have an internal disposition to the good that bubbles up from their very character -- the less they need the external force of the law to compel them to do the good. (p. 16-17)

We learn to love, then, not primarily by acquiring information about what we should love but rather through practices that form the habits of how we love. These sorts of practices are "pedagogies" of desire, not because they are like lectures that inform us, but because they are rituals that form and direct our affections. (p. 21)

If you are what you love, and your ultimate loves are formed and aimed by your immersion in practices and cultural rituals, then such practices fundamentally shape who you are. At stake here is your very identity, your fundamental allegiances, you core convictions and passions that center both your self-understanding and your way of life. In other words, this contest of cultural practices is a competition for your heart -- the center of the human person designed for God, as Augustine reminded us. (p. 22)

To be human is to be a liturgical animal, a creature whose loves are shaped by our worship. And worship isn't optional. (p. 23)