Today
we celebrate the joyous holiday of Christmas, of Jesus’ birth into our world.
Last night, at midnight mass, we heard a reading from the Gospel of Luke that
described Jesus’ birth in a humble manger, a very vivid image that helps us
understand the circumstances of his birth at the beginning of the first century
in Israel. In today’s reading from the
beginning of the Gospel of John, there are many images that are more openly
theological and poetic in nature, particularly the image of light. Indeed,
light is a theological image that occurs frequently in the Gospel of John.
In trying to understand Jesus as the light
of the world, we should note that for the people of the ancient Mediterranean
world, light and darkness were two very separate realities. Darkness did not mean the absence of light. Darkness meant the presence of darkness, just
as light meant the presence of light. As
light can push out the presence of darkness, darkness can push out light.
Light is associated with life in the Gospel of John. Jesus comes to the
world as light and life. The Gospel
tells us that Jesus is the Word in whom all living things came into being.
Since we all have light as living beings, light and life go hand in hand. Light and life have their origin in God’s
created work. As created beings, we can hand down this light to others, but we
can’t create it ourselves.
We
use this symbolism of light to explain what happens in the Sacrament of
Baptism. We receive the light of Christ
in our lives when we are baptized.
During the Sacrament of Baptism, the godparents light a candle for the
baptized child from the paschal candle that represents Christ. They are to keep the light of Christ alive in
the life of the child that was just baptized.
There
are times in our lives when the darkness can seem overwhelming. When I was a missionary in Ecuador, I used to
travel a lot in a canoe to the different villages that our mission site
served. A few times I traveled down the
river after the sun had gone down, with no lights shining anywhere in the
darkness of the jungle. Once, when we
were speeding down the river in a canoe in the middle of the night, we hit
something in the middle of the river. I
was jostled around the canoe like a ragdoll, and I thought that the canoe would
capsize or break into pieces. Luckily,
we remained in the canoe, although very shaken and bruised. We had hit a tree that had fallen in the
middle of the river. Wow, did I feel
lucky that I survived that incident.
Things can come out of the darkness of
the world and hit us unexpectedly, taking our focus off Jesus and off our faith
in him.
The Roman philosopher Cicero, who was born a
century before Jesus, described the Roman Empire as “a light to the whole
world.” We can make so many other things in our lives the light that we focus
on to the exclusion of our faith: our work, our personal ambitions, our
national identity, and our desires for success or material possessions. Those lights can outshine our Catholic faith
& Jesus the light of the world.
As
part of our Church's faith, we believe in the Word of God, the Logos, the Word
that created the world and came to earth as the baby Jesus as a light to our
world. This truth about Jesus can seem
so distant from the reality of our world, especially now with secular message
that is taking over our society. The violence, darkness, and chaos of our world
can seem overwhelming. With all we
witness in our daily lives, it may seem like the light of God and the light of
Truth are being put out. We need that
light from God to serve as our compass – to lead us and guide us.
It
is important that we, as believers, as Catholics, strongly reaffirm with our
lives the salvation that comes with the birth of Christ as a light in our
world. In the humble manger in
Bethlehem, this light that now illuminates our lives was made manifest to the
world. Christ as a light is the way that
leads to the fullness of our humanity as it is revealed to us. It would be beneficial for all of us this
Christmas season to ask ourselves how Jesus functions as a light in our own
lives and what we can do each day in order to continue to follow the Light of
Christ and to be that light to others.
No comments:
Post a Comment