Light and Darkness

By Fr. John Riley
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In the beginning, darkness covered the abyss. Vacuum and void were enveloped by a cosmic night which knew no day. Time did not yet exist. Our universe was no more than a thought in the mind of God. As the Spirit of Yahweh swept over the face of the deep, at a moment of His own choosing, God the Father summoned into existence the cosmos through the power of His eternal Word … "Let there be light!"

"Bang!" is the word that science frequently uses to describe the event. Light flooded and illuminated the void as a wildly spinning and expanding system of coalescing galaxies, stars and planets rushed into space. In faith we know that ex nihilo (from nothing) God willed into reality, time, space, energy, matter and set the universe in motion. He separated the light from the darkness and saw that it was good. "Thus the evening came, and morning followed; the first day."

In this new universe God also created and sustained in existence spiritual beings formed in His Own Image and Likeness. Angels, creatures or pure spirit, sang the Lord's praises and reflected His splendor. Men, curious hybrids of spirit and matter, would rise from the dust from which they were taken, to embrace their eternal destiny in the presence of God.

But darkness had not been banished entirely. Lucifer ("the bearer of light"), perhaps the most powerful and splendid angel, rebelled — claiming Divinity as his own. His "Non Serviam! — I will not serve!" shook the very fabric of the universe, and he and his followers were cast forever out of the presence of Light, enslaved to a dark destiny. At the dawn of human history, this same Satan tempted Eve and Adam, the parents of the human race, and they fell. Through their tragic choice, sin entered the human condition, and with sin, suffering and death. The Devil became the Prince of this world, and moral darkness threatened to eclipse the Divine Light.

Our Father would not leave His children lost in the darkness. Though the dark angels had by their powerful and obstinate wills chosen to reject God forever, humanity, weak-willed beings that we are, could still respond to the promptings of grace and turn back from the dark abyss. But our eyes were accustomed to the darkness. Only an extraordinary manifestation of light would enable us to see the truth and to choose life. Thus, the Son — "God from God, Light from Light" — for the salvation of mankind "came down from heaven" … "conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary."

"The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us," observes St. John the Evangelist at the beginning of his Gospel. The ancient conflict between light and darkness is a major theme dramatically presented throughout John's Gospel. Jesus Christ, God and Man, "the Light of the World," grapples with darkness and its agents … "the Light shines in the darkness — a darkness that did not overcome it."

In this week's Scripture passage, taken from the third chapter of John's Gospel, Nicodemus hesitantly approaches Christ under the cover of night. He senses that Jesus is a teacher from God, but this timid Pharisee is not yet ready to commit himself to the Light. Our Lord observes that men continue to love the darkness, because light exposes their sins, calling them to repent and to act in truth. Jesus calls Nicodemus to emerge from the shadows of the night. Later in John's Gospel, Christ will call forth others … the sinful Samaritan woman, the crippled man in Jerusalem, the woman caught in adultery, the man born blind, and ultimately Lazarus — from the darkness of the tomb and death itself.

Jesus calls us out of the darkness too. Our eyes are confounded by the garish light of this world; our sight is compromised by mediocrity and blurred by sin. But Jesus Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life Who "enlightens every man." During Lent, the season of shadow and suffering, we need to strive in an intense and focused way to overcome the weakness of our fallen human nature. By prayer and fasting — and in particular through the sacrament of penance — we receive the power to emerge from the darkness and embrace the beatific Light prepared for us from the beginning of the world.

Fr. Riley is parochial vicar at St. John the Evangelist Parish in Warrenton and professor of Sacred Scripture at Christendom College in Front Royal.

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