https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/010321.cfm
If you have ever been down to 4th Street Live you may have noticed a peculiar historical maker on the street out front. It chronicles one of the most famous ‘epiphanies’ in modern times. A 43 year old monk named Thomas Merton who lived in the Abbey of Gethsemane near Bardstown was visiting Louisville in 1958. 4th Street was bustling then as now. He wrote:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness ... [I felt such a sense of relief and joy] that I almost laughed out loud… I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.”
An epiphany is a sudden appearance of God. Merton experienced it, just as the mysterious Magi did, in the form of light. The Magi, from a people living in darkness in the East, saw a great light in the sky that guided them to the Incarnate God. Merton saw a crowd of strangers suffused with the light of holiness—sanctified by the fact that God had chosen to become a member of our stupid and sorrowful race (his words not mine).
Our tradition says that God dwells in unapproachable light. That God is light. And that out of His own brilliance—before the stars and the sun were made—he said those first words, “Let there be light.”
Moses spent 40 days with God on Mount Sinai recording his words. When he came down the mountain, he glowed intensely with God’s light. He was so bright that his people insisted that he put a veil over his face so that they weren’t blinded. Like in Merton’s revelation, he was walking around shining like the sun.
Sitting in this beautiful church, it is easy to appreciate this idea. In the summer in late afternoons and on Sunday mornings our sanctuary is shot through with glorious illumination.
And yet we know that this world is also full of darkness. The old year just completed, unlamented, uncelebrated, miserable old 2020 was a dark time for almost every one of the 7 and a half billion of us on this planet. [81 million people have been sickened by Covid-19. Nearly 2 million have died. Jobs lost. Milestones missed. ]
We also know the darkness that exists within ourselves. Maybe we are “Covid shaming” other people – judging them for the things that they are doing or not doing. Maybe we lack concern over other people’s suffering. Or even take some pleasure in it. Perhaps we feel that we are more important that other people. That we deserve to be at the front of the line for a vaccine or the front of the line for so many other goods of the earth. All of these things are examples of grasping for things that are not God. And I want to make sure that I am including myself in these temptations. They show a disordered desire for darkness and death. The darkness of sin is strong. Yet Christ is the true light that is already shining. And the darkness shall not overcome it.
He gives us, as we hear in the Christmas carol O Holy Night, “A thrill of hope / This weary world rejoices.” The original audience who Isaiah speaks to in the first reading could relate surely relate to the sentiment in this carol. After almost a century of exile in Babylon and after watching their Temple destroyed, their king killed, and being occupied by a foreign power, the Jewish people were finally, finally, allowed to return to their country and their hopes were realized.
God speaks the same words to us that he spoke to them: all the nations of the world shall walk by our light. Though darkness covers the earth, our radiance has come. We are called to rise up in splendor and drive away the thick clouds that cover the people of the world. The glory of the Lord shines on us and in us and through us. No longer do we need the light of the sun and moon, for God’s light will burn in us like the star of Bethlehem.
God became human so that we might become divine. That is the beauty of the Incarnation. Of Christmas. And if God is light, in receiving God’s grace, we too become beings of light. Of holiness.
I like short prayers. St. Paul tells us to pray always and to pray without ceasing. This can be hard to do if we feel the need to make complex or perfect prayers. I suggest God’s first words as a simple prayer whenever we see darkness in the world or sense it within ourselves: Let there be light. Or, if you like, you can use the poetic Latin version: Fiat Lux.
Let the light of God purify everything dark in me. May God’s brilliance burn away every shadow. May all that I am be filled with the radiance of God’s uncreated light so that I might become what God is. Let there be light.
Comments
Post a Comment