Easter 2014: Christ is our light!

Here in the northern hemisphere the sun has started shining and the days are getting longer. Night has been banished to its rightful place, and no longer intrudes upon our afternoons. It's now spring, filled with signs of new life everywhere.

Interestingly, both of the church's major feasts begin in the darkness of the night and centre on light. We begin celebrating Christmas - that silent, holy night - at Midnight Mass, where we are reminded that the people that walked in darkness has seen a great light. Here, in the depths of winter gloom, that light can seem tiny and fragile, just as a baby is... although we also know, as the evangelist John says, that the darkness cannot overpower it. And now, a few months later, we gather around a fire at the Easter Vigil, to proclaim that Christ is our light! Not only has the light not been overpowered by darkness, it has now given us a glorious night truly blessed, when heaven is wedded to earth... which, of course, is what Christmas night is as well!

And may we all truly live as people of the light, Christ's light - not just today, or during Eastertide, but throughout our lives...

 

 

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