I am sure that we have all had the experience of spending a significant amount of time in a poorly lit area. At first, it seems unmanageable, we bump into the silhouettes of furniture, stub our toe on hidden traps, or knock things over with echoing crashes. Yet after a while our haphazard hopping around becomes survivable, as our eyes adjust to the darkness. Eventually, we start living in this darkness as if it were the light. It is my fear that often as Christians, we can too easily start living our lives in a spiritual darkness that claims to be the light and grow quite indifferent to the darkness.
The readings this Sunday emphasize this theme of darkness. What is this darkness? Or what does it mean to sit in darkness? This darkness by all accounts is symbolic of man’s separation from God. If one were to look at 2 Kings 15:29 one would, one would find that Naphtali (the tribe that Isaiah sees living in the land of darkness) was one of the first tribes/lands to go into exile. What their exile is always attributed to, as well as that of the other tribes in the Old Testament, is a departure from following God. They started relying on the gods of foreign nations or even themselves and eventually found themselves in utter ruin. It is perhaps easy to look back on them with a level of condescension. What could they possibly be thinking, abandoning God like that? But if I look at my life and you look at yours, I am sure we will find many areas that Christ’s light has not been able to penetrate because of our comfort with our darkness.
It is a great danger that if we never confront these areas in our lives, the message of the first reading and the gospel falls flat. And indeed, it can. After the proclamation of this good news for those who sat in darkness, Jesus calls us to repentance. I think we too often forget that when one has sat in darkness for so long, the light can be an unwelcome and painful encounter which is to be avoided. Yet, this Light calls us forth to act, to change, and yes it is uncomfortable but if we do not act we risk the danger of this light passing us by. If we are content with our darkness the light will have the ability to affect change in us. We become ignorant of the darkness in our indifference, and because we cannot recognize the darkness for what it is, the great prospect offered by the Light will be diminished. We will not realize that what Christ is offering us is not another self-help book, to be abandoned someday on the shelves of thrift stores, but that He is offering us His very self, the fulfilment of our desires. And perhaps the question to ask ourselves is whether we truly rejoice in our salvation. In short, I think the famous British apologist C.S. Lewis perhaps put it well when he wrote in The Weight of Glory “[we are] like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
In this Week for Christian Unity, let us pray that God’s light will penetrate the dark recesses of our hearts that have caused this disunity among Christians and that God’s love may shine through us so that those we encounter may not encounter us but encounter Christ.
Isaac Nibourg – St. Joseph Seminary, Edmonton, Alberta
Fot. Freely