With the coming of mobile phones, everybody carries around a little light as well. It is a very good and useful thing for us all.
Attitude to the Light
The coming of light ought to be good news for those living in darkness. However, this is not always the case. The Simon Community run night shelters for down-and-outs. Each night volunteers bring soup and sandwiches to those who for one reason or another do not want to come to the shelters. They go looking for them in derelict buildings and such places. The most important aid they take with them is a torch, because often there is no light where the down-and-outs live.
Most of the down-and-outs receive the volunteers as friends. But some refuse to have anything to do with them. The volunteers can tell at once which group they are dealing with by their reaction to the light. Some welcome the light. Others fear it. You could say that the light judges them, in the sense that it shows up the darkness in their lives — the darkness of alcoholism, misery, hopelessness, crime . . . but it does not come to judge them. It comes as a friend, to brighten up their lives, to comfort them. Its advent means the arrival of friends.
That’s how it was with the coming of Christ’s light. Christ did not come to judge people but to save them. He came bearing a light – the light at truth, goodness, salvation from sin. Some welcomed his light. But others rejected it because it showed up the evil in their lives.
There is darkness in each of us. We need to let the light of Christ shine into that darkness whatever form it takes. But there is goodness in us too. We are also attracted to the light. We should trust this goodness and try to follow it.
Perhaps the greatest danger facing us is that we might settle for a kind of twilight existence. We never decisively declare for the light. We never totally opt for the dark, but we do dabble in it. The result is a mediocre person — neither a great saint nor a great sinner, a person incapable of either great cowardice or great courage. Those who are in darkness may one day see the light and welcome it. But the twilighters? Who can teach them the glory of the light?
Those who follow Christ’s light fully and generously will find that their lives will be lit up by his grace, peace, love and freedom.
with love and prayers, Fr Michael