(For the audio version of this blog, please visit: https://brothersinchristcmf.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Mass-Blog-for-the-First-Sunday-of-Advent-2025.mp3)
This Sunday’s gospel reading illustrates the dangers of entropy. A physics professor will tell you that the higher the entropy, the lower the energy available to do work—and the lower likelihood we’ll get our house in order. Such laziness leaves a house dark and open to thieves who are highly motivated to profit from your sloth.
So stay awake.
“If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have not let his house be broken into,” Jesus tells us. “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.” (Matthew 24:37-44)
And do what? Steal something, as a thief would? Jesus wants something nobody can take from you. You must offer it up: That something is your light—sourced from our Creator. We were created to absorb it and convert it into the energy we need to do His work and reduce the world’s entropy. Entropy is life’s enemy. Again, ask a physics professor.
They’ll tell you, if there were no life on Earth, the Sun’s light would bounce off the world and radiate back into space. But because we’re alive, we must use that energy to be productive. If we didn’t fight entropy’s increasing disorder, we’d live in squalor. Weeds would invade crops, businesses would fail, thefts and murders would increase, wars would spread and lights would dim. So would the light of our soul.
In Sunday’s first reading, the Prophet Isaiah describes how we fight the entropy within us. It requires the heart’s evolution from an affinity for war’s destruction into a commitment to love’s productivity.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks;
one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord! (Isaiah 2:1-5)
Paul tells us the Lord’s light is our armor (Romans 13:11-14), but we must reach out to our Creator for it and reach within ourselves for the courage to put it on and fight the entropy that says, “Some other time.” Advent is the season of now; of arrival; of change. Paul says changing means throwing off the works of darkness. Physics says darkness results from work’s absence.
Do what’s necessary to keep your house lights on so Jesus can see your surprised smile when he shows up at your front door.
–Tom Andel
Our need for light is inescapable and there are many parallels in Holy Scripture describing how essential this light is to our salvation.
The light of the Holy Spirit is often depicted by a bright shining dove radiating the love of the Holy Trinity. This same light is infused in each of us at our Baptism and renewed at Confirmation. We have this inescapable light, but how often do we shield its warmth and glow by covering it with our sins and lack of love? Too often I am afraid (speaking for myself)
The power and grace of this gift are nearly impossible to understand, yet it is key to lighting the way to our own salvation.
Come Holy Spirit! Light the way.
Starting each day with a prayer for the wisdom, strength and courage to reflect God’s light to the world is a good strategy for finding our own way.
In the physical world, we’ve moved from incandescent bulbs—hot, inefficient, easily burned out—to LEDs that give more light with far less wasted energy/work. Spiritually, we face a similar choice. When we rely on our own strength alone, we burn like old bulbs: giving off more heat than light, tiring quickly, and letting frustration, anger, or ego dissipate the energy God gives us. But when we allow the Holy Spirit to “re-wire” our hearts, grace makes us more like LEDs—steady, cool, and far more efficient at turning God’s light into something useful for the world. Advent invites us to let God upgrade our inner circuitry so that more of His light shines through us, and far less is lost to the heat of anxiety, resentment, or distraction.
Beautiful–and bright–analogy, George. Many of us are attracted to the warm glow of incandescents and how they bathe EVERYTHING in a warm glow not their own. True warmth must come from within and show others the Way, the Truth AND the Light.