In our Gospel today, Jesus tells us that he has come into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in him might not remain in darkness. We take light for granted in our modern world, don’t we? I think of all the lights we see when we fly up in an airplane over a city at night. I am always amazed at the light. I have lived in many places where there is no electricity. In the jungles of Ecuador where I served as a missionary, the village where our mission site was located had electricity most of the time, but the outlying villages where I traveled had no electricity at all. Kassa island where I served as a Peace Corps volunteer in the county of Guinea in West Africa had no electricity at all. Structuring a life around the lack of electricity and the lack of light at night is a very different reality compared to the world we live in here in the United States.
When I was hiking the Camino pilgrimage trail in Spain, the sun did not rise until about 8:30 AM, so most mornings I walked in darkness for at least an hour or two. Since many of the areas were down remote paths, there was not a lot of light. The last day of my walk into the city of Santiago de Compostela, I decided to start out very early in the morning, at around 4:30 AM, so I could arrive at the cathedral in time to make it to the noon pilgrims’ Mass. During those early morning hours, I spent time in a eucalyptus forest and down some very remote paths in total darkness before the sunrise that morning. The quiet dark hours that gave way to a beautiful sunrise gave me time for quiet reflection and prayer, time to spend with God. I remember the little LED flashlight I used on the Camino in those early morning hours that gave me just enough light to be able to see where I was going.
Jesus is the light of our world. He is that light that helps us navigate through the darkness and shadows that we encounter in life. Jesus illuminates those values of our faith that we are to live by. May we see Jesus as our light in the midst of those things that could take us off our path of faith.
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