Let there be light

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Luke 8: 16-18) is all about light: what light we stand in, and what we do with the light. The light is clearly the light of God, the light of eternity. Yet we can be tempted into hiding the light of God in our hearts, our betrayal of which we may not even notice until the little of it we retain is taken away. So says Jesus in this compact passage. How can we avoid such a calamity?

In its origins, the light that Jesus here commands us to let shine is not our light but His light in us. Normally, for light to shine out we need to open up the shutters or draw wide the curtains. Paradoxically, like a flame that needs protection as it takes hold, the only way God’s light can shine out of us is for it first to shine inwardly in the cell of our soul. We dilute the light every time we leave this cell and seek the artificial light down the corridors of our gaudy imaginations. In contrast, the light that comes from other kinds of knowledge is good – the light of philosophy or science or a healthy imagination -  but only God’s light can flood our hearts like a summer daybreak to reveal His supernatural mysteries through faith and the gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Why then do we hide the light, covering it with a bowl or putting it beneath a bed, to use Jesus’ images? We are right to be prudent of course: Jesus said let your light shine, but He did not say we ought to shine it into others’ eyes like an interrogator!

Perhaps we sometimes refuse to share the light for two reasons: first, we consider ‘letting our light shine’ as a technical problem of communication, of saying the right thing at the right time and in just the right way, as if we were the builders of God’s kingdom, not Him. And nevertheless, this is in various ways a miscalculation, not because discretion is wrong – far from it – but because being the light to others cannot be reduced to a technique. We are not called to communication but to communion, as the great French writer Fabrice Hadjadj says. God’s call, which should echo in our lives for the sake of others, is not merely a lesson to be learned but a romantic adventure to be engaged upon. Blessed be God if we become skilled in reaching out, but the fruitfulness of our actions depends on their remaining rooted in the vine that is Christ. The harvest comes from His hand, not ours. As to whether we are speaking in the right moment, for that we must depend explicitly and confidently on the Holy Spirit.

The second reason we might refuse to let our light shine comes from a much worse place in which our hesitancy arises now from a kind of surrender to the light of others, their views and attitudes, their mistaken opinions, as if a rightful humility before their experience should lead us into hesitancy about our own. If we miscalculate here, the problem runs deep, for hesitancy is not the fruit of humility but a sign that our grip on the light of God is weak, possibly that His flame burns only feebly in our souls, or perhaps that we have not taken the time to put fuel on the blaze He intends to kindle in our hearts. For fire to take hold, it needs oxygen, heat, and fuel. For God’s fire to take hold, it needs the breath of the Holy Spirit, the heat of God’s love, and the fuel of our surrender to God’s light, in the rays of which the light of others is like a 40 watt light bulb before the blazing sun.

The fact we do have not His boldness suggests we have not yet gone deeply enough into His mystery. Or worse, that instead of turning to Him in the cell of our souls, we wander down the labyrinth of our own minds, vainly seeking out our reflection in the mirror of the minds of others, rather than in the mind of God. To God’s light, we can strangely, not to say perversely, prefer the chiaroscuro – the blend of dark and light - that we see in pictures like Caravaggio’s study of Salome holding the head of John the Baptist. Behold Salome who dreamed of triumph, now disgusted by the realisation of her mother's fantasy.

This is why to anyone who has not, even the little he thinks he has will be taken away. This is not a punishment on poverty. Rather, it is the fate of those who, through a kind of greed, have become excessively attached to the things humans can cling to beyond reason – esteem, respect, status, good standing, reputation, the good opinion of our fellows.

If, instead, we were rich in the contemplation of that light that shines within us, if we let it fill our minds and hearts in daily prayer, then we would not even think or care to dissimulate about what is within, least of all to hide it under bowl or bed. We would no more think of doing so than we would think of turning on the light in a room that is already flooded with the rays of the sun. The journey towards allowing the light to shine out of us begins with the step that takes us towards the light coming from the mystery of His presence in our hearts, for the kingdom of God is within.