ADVENT WEEK 03 05 – Year I

Letting Our Light Shine

(Is 56:1-8; Ps 67; Jn 5:16-36)

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“It is better to light one candle, than to curse the darkness.”

CLC grads at the Oblate pre-novitiate in Meru, Kenya

That motto of the Christopher Leadership Course fits today’s liturgy, which invites us to let our faith be a light shining in the darkness of this tired and wounded world.

In the gospel passage, Jesus refers to John the Baptist as a burning and shining lamp, in the darkness of a religion limping with corruption, and a politically oppressive system.

The source of that light is named the first reading as God’s deliverance and salvation to those who love the Lord, keep the Sabbath, and hold fast to the covenant God made with the wandering Israelites in the desert.

In April 1918, Edith Stein, a Jewish woman who had lost her faith in God, visited Anna Reina, a Lutheran friend who had just lost her husband to the war. She expected to find a depressed and broken widow, but to her amazement, Anna, though deeply grieving, was radiant with hope in the resurrection.

That meeting, as Edith wrote later, was the moment “when my unbelief collapsed and Christ began to shine his light on me – Christ in the mystery of the Cross.” In her own way, Anna, without knowing it, had been like John the Baptist, a burning and shining lamp bearing witness to the light of Christ. She never learned what role she played in the conversion of Edith, who later became St. Teresa Benedicta and would be martyred in a concentration camp for her faith. But she was crucial to that story.

We are invited to be like Anna, by our ability to forgive from the heart those who hurt us, our humility to apologize to anyone we have hurt, to grieve and mourn our losses rather than staying stuck in grief. We can let our shine by blessing and affirming others, encouraging the fearful, and especially practicing the corporal works of mercy. We can let our light shine by living the Great Commandments Jesus gave us, by living the Beatitudes, and by living out the prescriptions of Matthew 25.

We can also let our light shine by making the Eucharist a priority in our lives, and celebrating it with sincere faith, experiencing the love of God as forgiveness and healing, through Word and sacrament.

May our celebration deepen our faith in Christ as light of the world, and empower us to let our light shine for all to see.