This is the last Sunday we will see the liturgical color of green for a while, as next Sunday we celebrate the feast of Christ the King with the end of our liturgical year, and then we enter the seasons of Advent and Christmas. As we get near to the end of the year, our readings today are about the end times, which seems appropriate, doesn’t it? But these readings are not about us with the angels in heaven in eternal life. Instead, we hear of a time of tribulation and judgement, of dark images such as the darkening of the sun, stars falling from the sky, and the shaking of the powers of heaven. This reading in Mark comes right after Jesus talking about the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, of a coming time of trial and persecution. Indeed, Jerusalem and the Temple would be destroyed as Jesus predicted. As the Gospel reading takes place at a dark time in Jesus’ life, just before his passover meal with his disciples and the beginning of his passion, the communities of the early Church first heard this Gospel in the midst of their own darkness, living under a cloud of fear and persecution. When Jesus, the Alpha and the Omega, the source and end of all, comes back in the end times, many will choose him, but others will choose the darkness instead.
Darkness, however, is a part of life. All of us experience darkness in different shapes and forms on our journey through life. I think most of us fear the darkness and see the darkness as a very bad thing. Darkness can bring a lot of pain and suffering into our lives. It can make us feel alone and abandoned. It can negatively affect our faith and our hope. Darkness can bring all those things to us. Often, we spend a lot of our time and energy fearing the darkness or battling the darkness. But, often, we are so caught up in the pain and suffering of the darkness we don’t see the gifts, the blessings, and the transformation that can come from the darkness as well. Recently, I have had some friends and parishioners tell me that they want to hear more homilies on stewardship, on social justice, on purgatory, that we priests do not preach on those things enough. Perhaps we don’t preach enough about the darkness we encounter in life, since it is not an easy subject to tackle. By the way, I do like hearing about what you want me to preach on, so I very gladly welcome those comments. Author Sue Monk Kidd states: “Too many of us panic in the dark. We don’t understand that it’s a holy dark and that the idea is to surrender to it and journey through to real light." I think of Jesus’ time in the tomb between his death on the cross and his resurrection; the seed that goes into the ground and that comes up from the soil into new life; the caterpillar that spins itself into a cocoon before it emerges as a beautiful butterfly; the bear that hibernates in his den in the cold dark winter to emerge in the springtime. These times of transformation are essential to new life or new birth. Yes, fear is a natural response to the darkness inside of ourselves and to the darkness we see around us. We need to let go of our fears and not let them have power over us; in faith, we are called to believe that darkness is an essential part of life & essential to our growth as human beings. Perhaps we all need to see darkness in a new way. In being open to the blessings, transformations, and light that are present in the darkness, we will be ready for Jesus when he comes for us in the darkness and trials of the end times. When we are going through a time of darkness, God calls us to trust, to pray, and to stay connected to him in any way we can. Trappist monk Thomas Merton writes: “True love and prayer are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone.”
Carylll Houselander is an interesting figure in our Catholic faith. She was a Catholic lay woman from England who lived in the first half of the twentieth century who could be best described as a writer, artist, and mystic. Although she had no formal training in psychology, theology, or counseling, she served as a spiritual director and counselor, helping those who were deeply wounded emotionally to heal. Priests and medical doctors would refer patients to her. I have come across her writings at different times, coming across this poem she wrote about darkness:
God will enter into your night,
as the ray of the sun enters
into the dark, hard earth,
driving right down
to the roots of the trees,
and there, unseen, unknown,
unfelt in the darkness,
filling the tree with life,
a sap of fire
will suddenly break out,
high above the darkness,
into living leaf and flame.
So how does darkness connect to the subject of stewardship we have been discussing these past several weeks? We have seen a lot of darkness of the pandemic, haven’t we. Perhaps we have had to confront darkness in our interior lives. And we have certainly seen darkness manifest itself in the world around us in different ways during the panic. A lot of darkness. Perhaps this is the time when we really need the value of stewardship in our lives the most, as it will help us get through these dark times. Any blessings or any light we receive from God in the midst of the darkness of the pandemic, we are not to keep that light or those blessings for ourselves. As disciples of Christ, we are called to be distributors of God’s blessings, God’s goodness, and God’s light. By being able to distribute that light and those blessings to others, we will be able to feel God’s light getting even brighter in our own lives. We are called to bring Christ’s light to others thru our gifts, our time, our talent, our treasures, our ministry, and our contributions to our parish. No matter what darkness we have in our lives, we can still be a beacon of light.
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