This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine . . .
The Church celebrates the birth of Jesus on December 25th, the day of the year (the winter solstice) when the sun rises lowest on our horizon, making the 25th (or thereabouts) the least bright, most dark day of the year. Spiritually, then, this is why we celebrate the birth of Jesus on the 25th as the moment when he came into our both naturally and morally dark world as the newborn light of the world – personally and in terms of grace, mercy, love, faith.
Of course you have noticed that since December 25th the sun has been rising earlier, making our mornings more luminous – even as the biblical readings of our Sunday Eucharists cast more and more light on the meaning of our lives. We also celebrated this increase in light (both natural and spiritual) last Sunday, February 2nd – calling it Candlemas Day! On that day, to underscore that increase in daylight (both natural and spiritual) the Church in many places blessed and distributed new candles to the faithful to take home as an incentive to spread the light of Christ’s presence and God’s grace more widely throughout the world.
At the same time – as on this second Sunday of February – our celebrant will read from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount wherein Jesus identifies us with his own luminous presence, saying: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.
For this reason, too, the prayers prescribed to bless the candles on Candlemas Day play upon the world light. For example: Almighty and everliving God . . . hallow these candles and kindle them . . . We, your faithful people, wish to take and carry them alight in honor of your name. May we then be worthy to offer them to the Lord our God and, ourselves, alight with the fire of your all loving charity, . . be counted worthy to be presented in the holy temple of your glory.
Which brings up a poem by the 19th century Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. It’s called “The Candle Indoors”. In it the poet is passing by a candle lit window at night. He wonders what the person inside is doing – possibly something that honors God. Which makes him think of his own “indoors”, his own fading flame. Mend that first, he thinks. Is he blind to his own faults while quick to notice a neighbor’s? Has he become salt that has lost its taste? But here’s what a poet does with such an experience:
Some candle clear burns somewhere I come by. / I muse at how its being puts blissful back / With a yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black; / Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye. //
At that window what task what fingers ply, / I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack / Of answer the eagerer awanting Jessy or Jack / There, God to aggrandize, God to glorify. //
Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire / Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault: / You there are master, do your own desire; / What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault / In a neighbor deft-handed? Are you that liar? / And cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?