Light Friday
You don’t have to be a blind man like the ones Jesus healed in the Gospels to experience blindness in life…because there are different types of blindness. In fact, there are three main types. The first is physical blindness. Believe it or not, we have all experienced physical blindness. That is what happens when we walk in the dark and cannot see our way. You see, it is light that allows us to overcome darkness. And this Advent season, we are asked to seek the Light that banishes all forms of darkness that we can encounter in the world.
The second type of blindness we can experience is intellectual darkness. This darkness that the intellect experiences we call ignorance. Our mind needs light to understand. That is why we have the image of a light bulb going off when we finally understand something. Our mind is illuminated in a particular way when we understand something. So what is this type of light that our mind needs? It is the light of Truth. Now Jesus said, “I am the Truth”…with a capital “T.” And it is in this way that Jesus, as the Truth, is the Light that drives out the darkness of our ignorance. So every time we understand something new, the light of Truth drives out a little bit more of the darkness of ignorance from our mind. And if we seek the Truth and not our own dim vision of reality, we will start understanding with our mind’s eye the truth the way God sees the world.
Now the third type of darkness, like the others, we have all experienced from time to time. It is spiritual darkness. Now, there are many ways we can experience spiritual darkness in our soul. It can take the form of despair. Despair is the darkness in the absence of the light of hope. When we think that something good is impossible to achieve, we lose hope. Jesus himself is the source, the light of our hope that pierces the darkness of despair.
Another form of spiritual darkness is doubt. Doubt is the opposite of the virtue of faith. When we doubt, we fail to believe; and in essence, we are blinded by doubt because we have not learned to maneuver our way with the eyes of faith. And again, Jesus is the light of our faith that cast out the darkness of doubt. The blind men whom Jesus cured may have lost their sight, but they were able to find their way to Jesus with their eyes of faith. The more we believe the less need we have to see physical proof with our eyes.
Then there is the darkest of all spiritual blindness—it is the “heart of darkness”…caused by our sins. You see, sin has a way of turning us inward. It is a self-love that sees others as what they can do for us and sees things as objects to possess for ourselves. But Jesus has already come to break the chains of self-love. A heart full of darkness is a heart void of the Love of Christ. So the more room we make for God in our heart, the more he can fill our heart with the Light of his Love. That is the greatest light that Jesus brings this Advent season. The warmth from His Love can melt the coldest of hearts. The light of his Love can dispel the darkness from even the most hidden reaches of our heart.
Truth, faith, hope, and love—those are the forms of light that we should pray for. So whatever our blind spots, God will shed light on them if we ask him to. And no matter what form of darkness we may encounter this Advent season, let us invite the Light of Christ into our hearts.
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 5th, 2009 at 10:22 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
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