The Ballad of Darkness and Light

Scripture: Candlemas, A.D. 2016 C

Homily:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

  

There are periods in the Church year that we call triduums, or “three days.” The Great Triduum is during Holy Week, and it consists of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil. But there are echoes of this in other seasons. In autumn, for example, we have the Hallowtide of Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls. And then we have this winter triduum of St Brigid, Candlemas, and St Blaise.

St Brigid was a holy nun, one of three patron saints of Ireland. Everywhere she went, she spread miracles and mercy in superabundance, and it is no exaggeration to say that she remains one of the most beloved Christians in all of history. When she grew old, the nuns at her Abbey of Kildare kept a fire going to keep her warm, and after she died—passing on to her heavenly reward—they kept that fire burning in her memory, to profess their faith that Brigid lives on in Christ Jesus. That fire burned for 1000 years, right up until the Reformation. It has recently been relit.

Candlemas, more properly known as the Presentation of Our Lord, celebrates the 40th day after Christ’s birth, when Mary and Joseph presented the infant Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem. There the prophet Simeon, who had been promised by God that he would not see death until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah, took up the Christchild in his arms and sang aloud with joy: “Lord, now You let Your servant go in peace! Your Word has been fulfilled! My own eyes have seen the salvation which You have prepared in the sight of all people: a Light to reveal You to the nations, and the glory of Your people Israel!” This Song of Simeon proclaims Christ not only as Israel’s promised Messiah, but as the Savior and Light of the entire world. In commemoration of this, we bless candles for our worship and devotions, reminding us that Christ is the Light of the World.

Last but not least, we come to February 3rd, the feast of St Blaise. Blaise was a philosopher and physician in the early Church, who even on his way to execution saved the life of a young boy who was choking. The tradition has arisen that the Church would pray on St Blaise Day for the healing all those afflicted by illness, especially maladies of the throat. Priests would take candles blessed the day before and cross them under the chins of the sick. Sometimes these candles would be lit, in which case the afflicted would have to maintain excellent posture.

We can see, then, that the clear and unifying theme of this winter triduum—of Brigid, Candlemas, and Blaise—is none other than firelight. The fire of the Holy Spirit brings to us light and life, hearth and health. From the burning bush of Moses to the tongues of flame at Pentecost, holy fire has ever indicated the presence of God. After all, in the words of St Paul, our God is a consuming fire.

This is worth dwelling upon for a bit. On the one hand, symbols of darkness and light are ubiquitous across religions and cultures. In China there are yin and yang, in alchemy it’s sulfur and mercury, and in Star Wars there are two sides to the Force. In the Bible, when the Jews find themselves in Exile, they collide with the prophet Zoroaster, who preaches a world of two gods: one a god of order and light, the other a god of chaos and shadows, locked in mortal combat until the end of time. It was in response to this dualism that the prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “I am the Lord and there is no other; I form the light and create the darkness.”

And this illustrates nicely, I think, what makes the Bible unique. In the Bible there are not two opposing forces, one of darkness and one of light. Certainly the devil would like to portray himself as the force of darkness, the Anti-God, but he’s not. Darkness has no substance. It is simply the absence of light, just as cold is the absence of heat and vice is the absence of virtue. There is no such thing as evil in and of itself; evil is simply a vacuum, the absence of what is good. Nor is there any substance to sin. Sin is not a thing. Sin is nothing more than a lack of God, a separation from God.

The devil, like all sinners, tries to twist his nothing into a something, his failure into a victory, his sickness into a strength, and his lack of accomplishment into a source of self-exultation. That’s what makes him the father of lies. It’s all a farce. God is no more challenged by the devil than the sun is challenged by a shadow. All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle. And as John’s Gospel proclaims, the Light shines on in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. There is no yin and yang; there is only God. There is no darkness; there is only the light.

Please keep this in mind whenever the Scriptures speak of God’s Judgment. Sometimes it might seem to us as though there were two gods in the Bible: one shining and glorious, who purifies and forgives us with cleansing light; and another who burns up sinners with the terrible fires of His almighty wrath. If we’re not careful, we can end up preaching a schizophrenic god, an arbitrary judge, who greets some with mercy yet roasts others upon a spit. Fleece the sheep and roast the goats! But that’s untrue. There aren’t two gods, one of darkness and one of light, one of mercy and one of wrath. There is only the One God; there is only the Light. Those fires of blessing and flames of perdition, they’re the same thing.

You see, God’s Judgment is nothing more than Truth, absolute, unfiltered, and eternal. It is the Light of Truth that dispels all darkness and unveils all things for what they truly are. It is the Light that reveals to us the depth and depravity of our sins, which is terribly frightening. And it is the Light that reveals to us the infinitely greater depth of God’s superabundance and mercy and love, which can be even more frightening.

If we define ourselves by our sins, by the wickedness and falseness and outright lies that we tell ourselves, then we will experience God’s Light as horror and His Truth as torture, because they destroy the false idols of who we think we are. But if we define ourselves by our true worth, by the love and glory and grace of the God Who loved us even unto death upon the Cross, then God’s Light will be the answer to all of our prayers, and His Truth will set us free.

Brothers and sisters, there is darkness in this world, but God did not create it. We encounter injustice and tragedy and unspeakable grief, which God did not intend. The Scriptures are clear: God did not create death. It is not His will that even one of these little ones should be lost. So then we are left with the question of suffering: Why does He allow it to happen? Why doesn’t He just force the world back to the way it ought to be? Why doesn’t He blaze forth His Light and burn away all the darkness here and now?

There is no easy answer to these questions. We can only know three things for certain: first, that God created the world out of nothing and made it good. For as broken as it has become, Creation is still a work in progress, still coming to its conclusion, and in the end it will be as in the beginning: it will be good, as God intends. Second, we know that God is not indifferent to our sufferings. In the person of Jesus Christ, God has joined us in our struggles and taken them all upon Himself. He does not sit aloft and aloof up in Heaven, but plunges down to the Cross, down to the grave, down into the very depths of Hell to raise us up to light and life eternal.

And finally we know that God is vast and mysterious and powerful and loving, and that someday He will bathe us fully in the unfiltered Light of His Truth. On that day, our eyes will be opened. We will see things for what they truly are. Every question will be answered, every tear wiped away, and death will be no more. Trust that God is more loving, more awesome, and more radically free than anything we can imagine or have yet known. Trust that nothing and no one is beyond His power to heal, to save, to raise up from the dead. Trust in the Light.

For indeed, there is nothing else.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.