After a rainy winter where we live, the sunshine lately has been most welcome – a reminder that in the beginning creation was formless, empty, and dark … and then there was light. (Genesis 1:1-3)
What is it about light that is so life-giving, and a source of re-creation? It brought to mind that patient basking in the sunlight streaming through his hospital room window as a temporary relief from the pain he was suffering. Or another patient who was blinded with severely burned eyes from an accident, months later able to see his newborn child for the first time.
It also caused me to remember reading about Thomas Merton’s revelatory light-filled experience on a street corner in Louisville, Kentucky.
If you are not familiar with Merton, a Trappist monk and prolific spiritual writer, his autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain, is an excellent reflection on his (and anyone’s) journey of faith. In it he describes a darkness in his spiritual journey, writing: “But my soul was simply dead. It was a blank, a nothingness. It was empty, it was a kind of spiritual vacuum, as far as the supernatural order was concerned.” From that spiritual low point, he later recounted this awe-inspiring God-moment experience:
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . . .
This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander
What a transformation! That image of light is pervasive throughout Scripture and it seems to me to take on great meaning in relation to guiding our journey of faith and to the ultimate destination for which the human soul longs. Merton was blessed with that beatific vision.
“…the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.”
– Matthew 4:16
Working as a hospital Chaplain, I was fortunate to have recruited a number of volunteer Eucharistic Ministers who would bring Holy Communion and pray with our Catholic patients. To prepare themselves for that privilege, I provided them with the following prayer to contemplate and take into their heart at the beginning of their ministry service. It applies to all who desire to be Christ’s light into the world. May the light of Christ shine on and through you, now and always.
Reflection questions:
- Have you ever had any personal “God-moments” that involved light?
- Reflect on what you believe Jesus meant when He said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
- Check out this inspiring prayer for walking in light: https://youtu.be/0IGFuWv8Fzs
Scripture References
Genesis 1:1-3 Matthew 4:16 John 8:12
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