Friday in the Octave of Easter, April 5, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Then God created light again
When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore, but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.
Here is another experience for the disciples, especially Peter in this case, of darkness and light.
Jesus is on the cross:
It was now about noon, and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. The sun stopped shining, and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. And Jesus died.
And since those times the darkness has come each night, and the light has come each morning.
Ron Rolheiser remembers that darkness came before light and covered the deep, until God said, “Let there be light. And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.”
But, Father Ron says, there is a deep darkness beyond the lack of sun, beyond even an eclipse like the one we expect on April 8.
There is a kind of darkness that envelops us whenever what is precious to us is humiliated, exposed as powerless, ridiculed, terminally defeated, and crucified by our world. This darkness besets us whenever the forces of love seem overpowered by the forces of hatred. The light of hope seems extinguished by the deeper darkness that the Gospels say formed a cloud over the world as Jesus hung dying. In fact, creation returned to its original chaos, as it was before there was light.
Rolheiser’s thoughts are titled, “Then God created light again.”
God created light a second time, this time by raising Jesus from the dead, and this new light is the most staggering light of all. When goodness itself gets crucified, what’s the basis for any hope?
In two words, the resurrection.
Just wait three days, and Jesus will rise from the dead. Can I wait that long, especially if darkness is all around me. This question rears up like a vicious dragon time after time in my life. I can’t hold my breath. My heart will not stop beating. Can I wait? Just three days?
Fr. Rolheiser remembers something from his seminary lectures taught by biblical scholar Raymond Brown. “The darkness that beset the world as Jesus hung dying will last until we believe in the resurrection. Until we believe that, the darkness of Good Friday will continue to darken our planet.”
When darkness enveloped the earth a second time, then God made light a second time. And that light, unlike the physical light created at the dawn of time, can never be extinguished.
In the car Margaret asked Jasper and I what we thought about the darkness and the light.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (from John 1)
I am writing at nearly 10 pm. Of course it’s dark outside, but inside Thomas Edison’s light bulbs burn. My computer screen is brighter than the rest of the room. These lights go on and off. I control them (mostly).
Soon I’ll turn out the lights in our apartment. The computer screen will be black after five minutes. The natural and quiet darkness will slow my mind’s alpha waves and set me on the path to sleep. Will my dreams be of the darkness of my personal culture (and that of the world) or the light of my Savior?
Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, spoke to the scribes and elders who accused him. “There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.
I think of the candles we light together on Christmas Eve in the darkness, the lights that quickly fill an entire sanctuary.
This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine,
Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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