A Great Light
The fruit of patient endurance
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
Upon those who lived in a land of gloom a light has shone.
-Isaiah 9:1 (proclaimed at the Christmas midnight mass)
Therefore, do not throw away your confidence; it will have great recompense.
You need endurance to do the will of God and receive what he has promised. -Hebrews 10:35-36
Darkness is rarely comfortable. Whether enduring the long nights and short, often cloudy days around the winter solstice or navigating the doubt and uncertainty within our own hearts, darkness is difficult. The great fruit of abiding in seasons of darkness is that we are softened, sensitized, and prepared to receive the light that comes from God.
Every year, I delight in hearing Isaiah’s proclamation at the Christmas vigil - ‘The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light’. This year, as I was reading at church the beloved passage came to me anew as a question and an answer:
Question: Who has seen a great light?
Answer: The people who walked in darkness.
To ‘walk in darkness’ means a willingness to trust in God in all kinds of darkness. Literally walking at night without a headlamp takes trust - and this is an exercise Lisa and I frequently do at our homestead. To walk in darkness, I need to stop, settle, and tune in more closely to my other senses to make up for the relative lack of sight. If I tense up, it won’t work. But if I relax, I’m able to feel the ground with my feet, and I can navigate our paths fairly well without sight. With trust, I can walk forward. Without trust, I’m paralyzed.
Similarly, every kind of disturbance and uncertainty in life brings a kind of darkness. From an ordinary bad day to the devastating loss of a spouse or a child, we can find ourselves brought beyond the limits of our self-understanding and capacity to find peace in the present moment. The temptation, when this inner darkness comes, is to fail to walk forward. Our old, self-protective mechanisms will desperately try to find a sense of safety and reassurance somewhere ‘out there’ in the world of form - comfort food or a bath, TV or the internet, socializing or positive encouragement from a friend, drawing on happy memories or fantasies, or whatever. None of these things are inherently bad, but when we’re in a place of inner darkness, we are also in a place of great spiritual opportunity. We have the chance to choose - am I going to try and recover my equilibrium based on what has felt good in the past, and in doing so stay on this same level of understanding? Or, am I going to walk forward into the darkness, with acceptance and trust, seeking the great light that comes from God? There’s sometimes a time and place for external comforts, and sometimes they really can make us feel better - for a time. We might call these the ‘lesser lights’.
When we turn and walk through the inner darkness with confidence and patient endurance, we remain open to God. In this state of patient openness we feel and stay present to both our pain and the love of God. This gives God the space to grow us through our suffering, and to provide the great light of divine consolation. God longs to transform us, including to transform us through our pain and suffering. If we are too quick to provide our own consolations (at the level of sensation and ego), we may short circuit the process. It’s not a coincidence that the central symbol of Catholicism is the bleeding, tortured body of Jesus Christ on the cross. When we gaze upon the cross in faith, the cross reminds us of two things: 1. Divine Love can come to us through suffering. 2. Conscious suffering surrendered to God does not end in destruction but in resurrected life.
Who sees a great light? It is those who consent to walk forward in the darkness, trusting that God will give us light. When pain and troubles arise, can I learn to turn first to God? Cn I learn patient endurance, to allow my trouble to be as it is while I abide in patient, prayerful hope?
The modern world is awash in ‘lesser lights’ offering other ways to respond to our pain - ways that keep us psychically small. If we have a smartphone in our pockets, it’s just so easy to take away the bad feeling through scrolling and dissociating from our body. Most over-the-counter medicines are primarily designed to mask symptoms. The assumption of the modern worldview is that when there is discomfort, there must be a way to take control and manage the problem through our efforts.
What if the feeling of discomfort is a spiritual opportunity? What if the darkness is a gift? It’s difficult to intensely seek the greater light of God when we feel self-content and in control of our lives. Yet when our ordinary lights are stripped away, God can open the door to a deeper love, to a great light that is not of our own making. If we are willing first to walk in darkness and patient endurance, Christ can become our light, a light that no darkness can take away.
This saying is trustworthy: If we have died with him we shall also live with him; if we persevere we shall also reign with him. -II Timothy 2:11-12
I love this.
Thank you.
Many years ago when I was an active alcoholic, during a blackout and with “friends” I hardly knew - found myself six hours from my home at a “party” at a remote cabin on the coast of Canada.
When I “came to” to discover my whereabouts- in shock- I complained and was assaulted by the owner of the house. It was night time (around 12
midnight), autumn, pouring rain and cold out —and I was only wearing a light cotton jacket- but due to my horror at what this person did to me I walked out the door and found myself in the bitter cold Canadian wilderness. I bushwhacked through the woods for hours and wept thinking this was my last night on earth. I bumped into trees and fell over stones in the dark until I was crawling on my hands and knees . Finally I prayed to God “please help me” and when I opened my eyes I saw a tiny spark in the distance…
I could barely make out what it was— but it was all I had , so I followed it like it was the Star of David. After a spell I found my way to a small cabin with a bulb hanging from the roof of a tiny porch. I crawled up the steps and knocked and an old woman wrapped in a shawl answered and welcomed me into her home. The rest is history. I hold this story in my heart and memory as a reminder of the Light Within and the prayer that saved me .
That Light is God ….i knocked and He heard me.
(FYI I have been sober now for twenty three years -and I owe my sobriety and health to that Light of God)
Great article. After my partner died, some of my friends tried very hard to fix me, and get back to the happy person they once knew. Yet I think I was in fact walking towards the darkness - where I could grow spiritually and where God’s transformation could occur.