Fighting the Law of Entropy

Good News Reflection
Friday of the 27th Week of Ordinary Time
October 8, 2010

Today's Readings:
Gal 3:7-14
Ps 111:1b-6
Luke 11:15-26
http://www.usccb.org/nab/100810.shtml
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/10_10_08.mp3

Fighting the Law of Entropy

What happens after a person accepts salvation from Jesus? Can he or she live a good Christian life without working hard at growing in holiness daily? It's easy to get lazy on the path to heaven. It's also easy to give in to the impulses of our flesh-nature. It takes conscious and conscientious forward momentum to stay close to God.

While we're still here in this sinful world, we suffer from the Law of Entropy. In scientific terms, "entropy" means that everything decays, disorder is natural and order is unnatural and requires great effort. So, too, in our spiritual lives. Growth in holiness takes effort, and without that effort, our holiness decays. Daily. And demons try subtle and not-so-subtle ways to entice us onto the easy path. Daily. As Jesus points out in Luke today's Gospel reading, we can end up worse off than before our conversion.

Jesus is the "someone stronger". He overpowered Satan by dying on the cross for our sins and then by overcoming death. It was our death that he took to the cross, and it was his life that he gave us in his resurrection, but we can only benefit from this if we choose to live in him, with him, and through him. Jesus has swept our houses clean, but now it's up to us – with his help of course – to keep it clean.

Jesus gave us the authority, through our baptisms, to bind and cast demons away from us. However, the best and most effective way to defeat demons is to do the opposite of whatever they want us to do. Are you tempted to get angry? Forgive instead, even if you don't feel like you want to. Are you tempted to demand your own way? Instead, do what the other person is demanding of you (as long as it's not sinful).

We need to stop living in automatic mode and identify the ways that our lives are being ruled by the Law of Entropy. Then, we can choose to live by the Law of God's Love. Putting effort into choosing holiness is so eternally and vitally important that the cost of our time and energy should not seem like too high a price.

We have to be overcomers, working on our holiness daily, consciously choosing behaviors that resist the Law of Entropy. One of the saddest examples of entropy is the case of someone with addictions who, although he or she desires to grow spiritually, is unwilling to pay the cost of recovery. An initial conversion to Christ will turn destruction into resurrection, but it cannot keep faith alive. On-going addictions cater to the flesh-nature, and so the person's spirit disconnects from the Holy Spirit, and decay sets in.

Remember, with God all things are possible. Everyone can be rescued from the Law of Entropy, but often it doesn't happen until they become miserable enough in their decay to desire change. We must continually pray for those who are on the road of destruction. We must take time to discern what God is asking us to do to help them seek recovery. And we must choose to trust in God's desire to resurrect all those we bring to him.

© 2010 by Terry A. Modica
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