Spirituality of the Readings
Holy Darkness
Darkness terrifies us and sometimes consumes us.
Sometimes.
But the right kind of darkness can give us peace. A night of good sleep, for instance. Or a “lovely soft day,” as the Irish call those shady, rainy, drizzling days, the ones that make Ireland green.
My experience of such a dark day was in Hawaii, no less, a place where light abounds. A brother Jesuit and I agreed to climb all the way up the side of one of Maui’s volcanic mountains—with a guide and with friends, Yes, this was the island that was recently devastated. And, further, we planned to climb down into the crater itself.
Fine, but no one had mentioned the great dark cave at the other end of the crater floor. It was a “lava tube,” they said, formed when a huge molten stream of lava began to cool on the outside, which hardened, while the inside continued to flow out, which left a tube. We were ushered into this tube/cave, and we followed trustingly. After a few curves and reverses, there was no morsel of natural light left in the cave, only one electric bulb, our salvation. We settled down on various rocks by its light.
Then the guide clicked off the bulb.
Yes.
He had warned us ahead of time, very kindly and all, but the words “put out the light” did not sound comforting to my ears.*
Deep, unrelieved darkness settled around us and around everything else. Eyes open, eyes closed, it was all the same. No light, no shadow, no least glow. Obviously we felt trapped and afraid, lost in a strange place, with our eyes having been put out.
But the result was just the opposite. Against all reason, we felt great: great rest, great peace.
“I’ll turn the light back on now,” the guide whispered after several minutes, but we stopped him. “No, no, leave it off. Give us more time.” We sat, unseeing, united, consoled by the warmth and depth of absolute night.
When the tiny little bulb did finally come back, our own eyesight surprised us. Seeing was like a memory that had slipped away. The dark had formed a resting place, it seems, in which our souls re-charged and our eyes recovered their innocence. Without notice, maybe, our daylight world had become too ordinary, too usual, too much just a tool to be used. But now it seemed miraculous, a gift given by God—even if it came through an insignificant incandescent bulb.
In Sunday's Gospel, the people hungered for light like this. “Are you the light?” they shouted to John the Baptist. Will you “bring glad tidings to the poor, healing to the brokenhearted, and proclaim liberty to the captives and release the prisoners” (First Reading)?
The Baptist said, I am only pointing you toward the light. It —he—will be here soon. Hold on to my arm.
Have you found an arm to hold onto? What is your experience of darkness? Maybe it is the opposite of quiet. Maybe terror is its name. Know that, however unrelieved your night may be, there is still, always, the promise of light. When you have been deprived for a long, long time, even one speck of light will change everything.
A tiny child might provide that on Christmas Eve!
* Those words are what Othello said just before he blew out the candle and then killed the sleeping Ophelia.
John Foley, SJ
**From Saint Louis University