First Sunday of Advent: The Splinter in Your Mind
Morpheus then offers the famous choice. The blue pill: you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. The red pill: you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. The blue pill is the comfort of sleep; the red pill is the harsh, demanding, but liberating shock of reality.
Today, on the First Sunday of Advent, the Church presents us with the Red Pill. The liturgical color changes to violet. The music shifts. The readings become stark. We are being asked to wake up from the simulation—the simulation of a world that tells us life is only about buying, selling, eating, and entertainment—and to confront the "splinter in our mind" that tells us we were made for God.
The Sleep of the Good-Enough
The Gospel today from St. Matthew (24:37-44) is chilling, not because it depicts evil, but because it depicts apathy. Jesus compares the coming of the Son of Man to the days of Noah. We tend to imagine the people of Noah’s time as wicked monsters, but Jesus describes them quite differently. He says they were “eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. ”
Think about that list. Eating. Drinking. Getting married. These are not sins! These are the fundamental goods of human life. They are necessary for survival and society. The tragedy of the people in Noah’s day wasn't that they were doing evil things; it was that they were so consumed by the good things that they became blind to the ultimate thing. They were so busy maintaining their daily routines that they didn't notice the storm clouds gathering. They were sleepwalking through life, right up until the flood came and carried them away.
Jesus warns us: “So too, you also must be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. ” The danger for us in 2025 is the exact same. We are not necessarily fighting against paganism; we are fighting against the anesthetic of busyness. We are fighting the blue pill of comfort that tells us we have plenty of time.
St. Paul, in the Second Reading from Romans (13:11-14), identifies this spiritual lethargy perfectly. He writes with the urgency of a man shaking a sleeping friend by the shoulders: “You know the time; it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep. ”
Paul contrasts the "works of darkness" with the "armor of light. " Interestingly, he lists "rivalry and jealousy" alongside "drunkenness and promiscuity. " Why? because rivalry and jealousy are the byproducts of a mind that is asleep to God. When we forget that our true citizenship is in heaven, we start fighting over the scraps here on earth. We need to wake up.
Atomic Faith: Making it Obvious
So, how do we wake up? How do we take the red pill and stay awake when the entire world around us is screaming for us to go back to sleep, to buy more, to scroll more, to care less?
We can turn to a principle from James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits. The first law of behavior change is:
Make it Obvious
Clear argues that our behaviors are largely responses to the cues in our environment. If you want to eat healthier, but you leave a jar of cookies on the counter, you will eat the cookies. The visual cue triggers the habit. Conversely, if you want to practice the guitar, but it’s hidden in the closet, you will never play it. To change the habit, you must change the environment to make the cue unavoidable.
In the spiritual life, we often rely on willpower. We say, "I will just try harder to remember Jesus this December. " That is a strategy for failure. Instead, we must Make it Obvious. We must design our environment so that the reality of God is the first thing we see.
The Prophet Isaiah gives us the ultimate visual cue in the First Reading (2:1-5). He describes a physical restructuring of the world: “The mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established as the highest of mountains. ” He describes a world where “swords are beaten into plowshares. ” These are tangible, visible changes. When the sword becomes a plow, you can’t miss it. The environment dictates a new way of living—one of peace rather than war.
This Advent, I challenge you to redesign your environment to make the "Red Pill" of faith obvious.
1. The Visual Interrupt: In The Matrix, "glitches" were signs that reality was breaking through. Create holy glitches in your home. Do not just put the Advent wreath on the table as a centerpiece; put it in a place where it interrupts your flow. Place your Bible open on the coffee table, not closed on a shelf. Put a Rosary on top of your phone charger. Make it so that you literally cannot go through your day without bumping into a cue that says: Wake Up.
2. The Digital Cue: We live on our screens. St. Paul tells us to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” In the modern world, this means we must curate what we see. Change your phone background to an image of the Nativity or a verse from today’s Gospel. Unfollow accounts that make you feel jealous or inadequate (the "rivalry" Paul warns against) and follow accounts that prompt you to pray.
3. The Morning Anchor: The people in Noah’s day were swept away because they started their day with "eating and drinking. " Start your day with the light. Before you check the news, before you check the weather, light a candle. Say one prayer. Make the presence of God the most obvious thing in your morning routine.
The world wants you to stay asleep. It wants you to be a consumer, a passive observer of the holiday season. But the Lord says, “Stay awake!” He is coming. The Mountain of the Lord is calling. Let us beat our swords into plowshares, our distractions into devotion, and walk in the light of the Lord.
