DECEMBER 14,
2011- SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS- ISAIAH 45:6-8,18, 21-25
I AM THE LORD, THERE IS NO OTHER. I FORM THE LIGHT, AND CREATE
THE DARKNESS. These words of Israel’s greatest prophet have always
echoed through the centuries and evoke lively feeling and stir those given to
reflection to lively thought. In our own times they are heard with a fresh
intensity of awareness. Those who follow advances in knowledge of the created
world that science has been revealing are now more sensitive to the nature of
the light that Isaiah, like the author of Genesis, mentions first in recounting
the work of creation. Just last month a report on the use of the powerful laser
in Austin, Texas explains how its focused light beam can serve to create a
molecular latticework that so transforms the material affected that at the
proper temperature it conducts electricity without any resistance. In this way
light can be so regulated as to make matter perform with greatly enhanced
efficiency, by greatly reducing energy loss in transmission. Light is now known
to be a carrier of energy that can be harnessed in a wider variety of ways
useful to humanity than was known until 1960 when the first laser was invented
and its operation demonstrated.
Such developments extend the
potential to recognize in nature in more specific detail the power,
intelligence, beauty, and Providence
of the Creator present in nature. Already in the fourth century Evagrius Ponticus explored further the line of thought that led
Isaiah to come to a fuller awareness of God’s creative power and the great
breadth of its application to our world. This insight that he preached was
centuries earlier than the account of creation on the first page of Genesis.
The inspired author of Genesis had, like Isaiah after him, grasped the radical
significance of light, so that the first act of God is to call light into
existence. “And God said ‘Let there be light’ And
there was light.” Even before sun or moon, were formed, light existed in a free state. He
understood this seemingly paradoxical fact that has been confirmed and
explained by astronomers in modern times.
Isaiah in today’s reading, not
only presents God as proclaiming that light is His creation; he also is the
creator of darkness. “I FORM THE LIGHT, AND CREATE THE DARKNESS.” The fact is that nothing exists
of itself, not even the darkness of empty space; that too is God’s creation.
Only God himself is eternal and essentially absolute, without beginning, or end,
or limit. That darkness as well as light is subject to God’s action and Providence is a highly appropriate truth to bring to our
attention at this liturgy today when we commemorate the holy and highly
articulate Carmelite mystic and theologian, Saint John of the Cross. In his poetry, and
in the prose works that commented on its spiritual and theological meaning, he
sets forth in impressive imagery that he then explains in extensive detail in
works of prose, the interplay of light and darkness that characterizes the life
of those who draw near to God in the depths of the inner self. That in the
physical cosmos the darkness far exceeds the light is now accepted as
established fact. The entire matter of this material world that is subject to
our sight and other senses is only some 5% of the cosmos. 22 % is dark energy
and 73% is dark matter. Just as God has created the physical light He is also
the Creator of the preponderant physical darkness that science can know only
indirectly, through certain of its effects on visible matter. So the statement
that Isaiah makes concerning the creation of darkness takes on fresh meaning in
our times now that darkness is not at
all a negative concept but is rather a mysterious dimension of this cosmos that
we can know directly only in part.
These
facts make the language of light and darkness employed by John of the Cross
quite timely for us in various ways. For one thing, this way of understanding
the world we inhabit reveals that for our human condition not only is light
essential but so also is darkness. The Carmelite mystic spoke of God’s more
intense activity in our inner life as being a
raio de tiniebla. (ray
of darkness) that is, a source of a light too pure and too intensely packed
with information giving knowledge of God in Himself for any human person to
visualize or imagine it in any form, or even to state it adequately in any
words. Such prayer given by God transcends distinct clear expression even to
oneself. It is at once a light and a darkness that brings with the knowledge it
confers the love that binds us to God for eternity. It is such love that is the
measure of our true worth. St. John
of the Cross succinctly states the case in his 57th Maxim: “At the
eventide they will examine you in love.”
As we
reflect on these mysterious truths of our faith and of our condition in this
created world today, may Saint John
of the Cross intercede for us and obtain the great gift of God that is the one
true saving knowledge that surpasses human understanding. In our Eucharist this
morning we are privileged to receive, in loving faith, the Lord Jesus himself,
the wisdom of God and the power of God, who prepares us for life in his
Father’s kingdom. Ω.
Abbot John Eudes Bamberger
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