Send forth your light

One evening, as I was reading the prayers of Evening Prayer from the Divine Office, one of the prayers really leapt out at me and caught my imagination. It went, “Lord, may your cross light up the darkness of the world:- may it lead everyone to you, the way, the truth and the life.”

Outside, it was the inevitable evening gloom typical of late winter, and I was stopped in my tracks, pondering the many forms of darkness and what form of ‘darkness’, particularly, to which this prayer was referring. My mind ran to all things physically dark: the moonless night, dark caves, the great depths of the ocean, unlit rooms and so forth. It seemed to me that these types of darkness are part of the created and natural world and, as such, are expressions of God and cannot, therefore, ever be thought of as evilly dark or the sort of darkness which has to be overcome.

If natural darkness is the work of God, then it stands to reason that the only true ‘darkness’, i.e. the darkness which is evil and is to be overcome, must therefore be the darkness of sin. Given that all things sinful and evil emanate from the heart, then the darkness of the night and of every black recess which exists upon this earth and in the entire universe cannot compare – in terms of darkness – to that which we find in our hearts when we think, say or do something which runs directly against God’s law of Love. All the evil and awful things of which humanity is capable are a direct result of what is in the heart: there cannot, therefore, be anywhere quite as dark as that of a human heart intent upon evil.

Jesus tells us very clearly that, “The things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and it is these that make a man unclean. For from the heart come evil intentions: murder, adultery, fornication, theft, perjury, slander. These are the things that make a man unclean” (Matt 15:18-19)

Our inner darkness takes many shapes and forms but, at its centre, are all those qualities which are the opposite of all that God is. If God is perfect tolerance, patience, peace, joy, truth, forgiveness, gentleness, humility, trust and love, then to be living out our lives in a state of – for instance – impatience, anger, untruth, pride, inability to forgive, selfishness, fear, and so on, is to live in darkness, and it is this darkness which has to be dispelled and overcome. In other words, we are to overcome our darkness by allowing the light of all that is Good, (i.e. God) to radiate into our hearts.

Both the Old and the New Testaments are full of references to the light as being directly linked to God. The psalmist begs of God to “Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell” (Ps 43:2-4); because he knows that “Even in darkness, light dawns for the upright, for the gracious and compassionate and righteous man” (Ps 112:4).

The psalmist goes on to tell us that God is the source of all light when he tells us that, “Blessed are those who walk in the light of your presence, O Lord” (Ps 89:15) and that it is in the perfect light of God, a light which searches our hearts, that we will be measured and judged in our turn, for “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Ps 90:8). Later on in the Old Testament the prophet Isaiah foretells a time when “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” (Is 9:2), and that God “will turn the darkness before them into light” (Is 42:16)

The darkness referred to in the Old Testament is the darkness created by man due to his original disobedience towards God and the resulting expulsion from heaven. In the days of the Old Testament those who died went to ‘hell’, not the hell of our understanding, but a place nevertheless of darkness and marked by what must have been a dreadful absence of light and of God. Jesus’ death and resurrection was to overturn all of that: the gates to the underworld and to heaven were unlocked so that humanity could for ever avail itself of the unending mercy of God and a future spent in the light of his presence.

The darkness, therefore, of the New Testament and of our present day, is the darkness of sin from which humanity finds it so difficult to be free. Jesus tells us that, “Though the light has come into the world men have shown that they prefer darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everyone who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, for fear his actions should be exposed; but the man who lives by the truth comes out into the light, so that it may be plainly seen that what he does is done in God.” (John 3:19-21)

Therefore, if true darkness resides only in the human heart, then it is in the human heart alone that the ight of the cross must cast its radiance. Isaiah referred to Jesus himself as being the Light to light up the world. This light, through the power of the Holy Spirit, remains available to all who turn to him, and it is this light which enables us to be, in our turn, the light of Jesus in an otherwise dark world. When we turn to Jesus he pours light into our heart to enable us to play our own part in lighting up the world. We are to carry on the work of Jesus and of his original followers in carrying the torch which has been handed down, over the centuries, from one generation of believers to the next. But how am I to do this? How am I to dispel the darkness of my heart that I can be a person of light? How can the cross of Jesus, such a symbol of pain, torture and death, cast light into the darkness of my heart?

Well, as I write this now, looking forward to Lent and to Easter, we will soon be rejoicing in the fact that the cross, which will stand empty on Golgotha (it apparently having done its work in dispatching once and for all the Christ), will no longer be a symbol of death, but of Life. The cross, previously a symbol of fear, shame and death no longer has any power whatsoever over mankind: it has been made redundant for all time. We have been liberated to live in the light of the risen Jesus who calls us into his light. We can be absorbed into that light by, firstly, facing up to all that we have thought, said or done which has damaged our relationship with God and with others and by sincerely apologising. We can be further absorbed into Jesus’ light if we can, in the words of St Paul, “Fill your mind with everything that is true, everything that is noble, everything that is good and pure, everything that we love and honour, and everything that can be thought virtuous or worthy of praise.” (Phil 4:8).

Let us, therefore, open our hearts to all that is good and honest and truthful, whilst at the same time taking every possible care to reject all that is base and which runs contrary to love. Let us reject gossip, untruths, anger and impatience; let us turn away from our every ungenerous thought or reaction; let us overcome our pride by reminding ourselves how much we owe to God and that we could never fully repay him for his relentless goodness to us; let us open our hearts more fully to those around us who lack even the basic essentials for life. Let our lives, in other words, be governed by a desire for all that is Good