4th Sunday of Lent (15.03.15)<\/p>\n
Darkness Is More Than The Absence of Light<\/strong><\/p>\n Nicodemus, an influential, political Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus, is the central character of Lent\u2019s 4th<\/sup> Sunday Gospel (John 3: 14-21). Does \u201ccame to Jesus by night\u201d indicate Nicodemus\u2019 fear of the potential political fallout if he had been spotted having a daylight private conversation with Jesus? This may have been part of Nicodemus\u2019 reason for choosing the cover of darkness, but could there be more to it? Darkness is more than the absence of day or artificial light.<\/p>\n Darkness can also affect the soul, a spiritual darkness with multiple intermittent and\/or progressive forms. Helping us to understand spiritual darkness is the Spanish Doctor of the Church, St. John of the Cross, (1542-91). He wrote scholarly volumes and provided wise support for the great reforming Spanish Carmelite Saint, Teresa of Avila.<\/p>\n In the \u2018Dark Night of the Soul\u2019 <\/em>St. John explains that \u201c \u2026 there are two reasons this divine wisdom is not only night and darkness for the soul but also affliction and torment. First, because of the height of the divine wisdom that exceeds the abilities of the soul; and on this account the wisdom is dark for the soul. Second, because of the soul’s baseness and impurity; and on this account the wisdom is painful, afflictive, and also dark for the soul.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n By way of explanation, St. John of the Cross invokes philosophy saying: \u201c. the clearer and more obvious divine things are in themselves, the darker and more hidden they are to the soul naturally. The brighter the light, the more the owl is blinded; and the more one looks at the brilliant sun, the more the sun darkens the faculty of sight, deprives and overwhelms it in its weakness.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Were God to reveal himself to us just now in the fullness of his glory we would be utterly overwhelmed and in a state of complete spiritual darkness. St. John of the Cross puts it this way: The persecutor of Christians in the early Church, Saul, is identified through his \u2018Damascus Road\u2019 encounter with the Ascended Lord. Acts 9:1-19 details how Saul was blinded needing to be led into Damascus by hand. He remained in that darkness for three days reminding us of Jesus\u2019 three days in the tomb.<\/p>\n The Church teaches that Saul, upon his conversion to Christ, received the fullness of Divine illumination. In the lengthy process of willing to be infused with this light by Christ Himself, Saul received all the teaching Jesus had imparted in his three-year active ministry. Saul, become Paul the Apostle, spent years away from Jerusalem assimilating and making his own, through prayer and reflection, this gift from the Risen Christ. The new disciple\u2019s three-day initial blindness, darkness, was symbolic of his life long pilgrimage. Paul\u2019s missionary journey brought him to resurrection, the fullness of Baptism, via his martyrdom. Saul, become Paul, was always adamant that he was not taught by the Apostles. Saul\u2019s faith was gifted to him directly and immediately by Christ.<\/p>\n There is no intention to be flippant in saying that Jesus \u2018fast-tracked\u2019 Saul. Three years of formation was compressed into three days! Jesus was building on a firm foundation of practiced Jewish faith. Saul\u2019s commitment to God had never been suspect. He was a thoroughgoing faithful and fully committed Pharisee who upheld the Jewish Law while enjoying Roman Citizenship. Up to the Damascus Road incident, Jesus of Nazareth was Saul\u2019s stumbling block.<\/p>\n The phrase in John\u2019s Gospel, \u2018under cover of darkness\u2019, may indeed mean that Nicodemus, out of political expediency, used a night time approach to Jesus. But it most certainly also means that Nicodemus, as with every other human person, save the Immaculate Mary, Mother of God, was in a state of spiritual darkness resulting both from the effects of inherited sin and from personal sin.<\/p>\n Jesus, through this night time conversation, initiated for Nicodemus the process whereby he was empowered to choose to leave the comforting, compromising darkness of religious\/political safety and be seen and counted as a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth.<\/p>\n Nicodemus strode out of darkness when he appealed to Pilate for permission to take the Body of Jesus down from the Cross and bury it. Incidentally, Nicodemus is listed in the Roman Martyrology with the prefix \u2018Saint\u2019. In the early Church most Saints were also Martyrs who paid with their lives for becoming disciples of Jesus of Nazareth. If you have never previously thought of Nicodemus as a Saint, now is a good moment to start to do so.<\/p>\n People absorbed by a world of all-consuming self-concern have no room for God. They are in a darkness of deception woven with predatory skill by Satan. In this state of deception they have effectively consented, to a significant and dangerous degree, to listen to Satan rather than God. If we sideline God, Satan steps in. In our spiritual life there is no vacuous \u2018middle ground\u2019, no empty but static \u2018no mans\u2019 land\u2019. Where Satan holds occupancy peoples\u2019 view of the world and each other becomes utterly un-Christlike. Jesus, who taught Nicodemus what it meant to be \u201cborn from above\u201d, offers us The Sacrament of Reconciliation as a means of recovering the \u2018Light that darkness cannot overcome\u2019, the Light of God\u2019s loving forgiveness.<\/p>\n Divine love is a gift accessible to all who truly believe in Jesus. That love is the power that can call us from timidity, self pre-occupation and the deception of self-protective darkness into the truth of God\u2019s light.\u00a0 St. John\u2019s Gospel Ch. 1 announces Jesus, The Word made Flesh, in these words: If our approach to Jesus is under cover of \u2018darkness\u2019 then maybe we, like Nicodemus, need to become light bearers, too.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 4th Sunday of Lent (15.03.15) Darkness Is More Than The Absence of Light Nicodemus, an influential, political Pharisee and member of the Sanhedrin at the time of Jesus, is the central character of Lent\u2019s 4th Sunday Gospel (John 3: 14-21). … Continue reading
\nJohn\u2019s Gospel Chapter 3 begins:
\n\u201cNow there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night \u2026\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u201c(when)<\/em> the divine light of contemplation strikes a soul not yet entirely illumined <\/em>(not yet at one with God), it causes spiritual darkness, for it not only surpasses the act of natural understanding but it also deprives the soul of this act and darkens it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n
\n\u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n