Christ the Light in the Darkness

1st Sunday of Advent

The months of the Jewish calendar begin with each new moon. While today we know that the moon cycle repeats every 29.5 days, and the dates and times of new moons can be calculated precisely, to determine the calendar Jews in ancient Israel could only make physical observations of the moon’s phases. In other words, they had to actually look at the sky. But here’s the problem. You can’t see a new moon because the illuminated side of a new moon faces away from earth. So, the Jews would have to wait until some of the moon starts to shine to know that a new moon has occurred. That could take a day or several days depending on cloud cover and weather that might affect visibility. Once the observers saw the moon, they would make a report to the Jewish Sanhedrin who would officially declare a new month to have begun.

On this first Sunday of Advent, I find that image quite captivating—precisely, a bunch of people sitting around, in the pitch dark of night, staring at the sky, hoping to see the faintest hint of new light. That, to my mind, is exactly what the Church does during this season of expectation and longing. When the night grows longer, we focus our attention to the sky to wait, not for the moon, but for, as the Gospel of Luke says, “the dawn from on high [to] break upon us” (1:78). That dawn is Jesus Christ, the light of the world.

In the Gospel, Jesus tells us to pay attention to the sky: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” He gives this command in view of his return at the end of time, when “they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” Now, some have certainly taken the Lord’s command literally and, like the ancient Jews charting the moon to determine the calendar, have sought to interpret various astronomical events as forebodings of Christ’s second coming. Perhaps a series of horrible catastrophes will occur before that day. I won’t rule out a literal interpretation, but at the beginning of Advent, I am inclined to take the Lord’s words to heart in a more spiritual way.

Jesus invites us to look at the sky, by which I take him to mean, I ought to look at the atmosphere surrounding my life: what’s above me, what’s around me, what’s in the air I breathe. I should be paying attention to what I see in the sun, the moon, and the stars, in other words, I am supposed to discern the “signs” of his return in the various things I look toward for light and guidance. If I can pick up a hint of his light within them, then I am to “stand erect” and “raise” my head because my “redemption is at hand.” By that I understand that when I find Christ’s light shining in the atmosphere around me, then I am to rejoice because his “advent” has been fulfilled in me. I will then have recognized his presence in my life, and in that consists my redemption.

The task of looking at the sky, however, is daunting because, as these winter days suggest, the sky is more often dark and cloudy than it is clear and full of light. To discern correctly what something is—whether it is the true light of the Lord or the false light of a fallen angel—requires us to strain, to squint, to peer deeply into the darkness and, if we see it through, to confront it. What I am saying is that we have to look at everything—both the good and the bad—in the hope that we might find the Lord in all of it. And let me be clear: the Lord is to be found in all of it.

Let me give you an example of how to find the light of Christ by looking into the darkness.

Take a sin—but not just any sin. Take your favorite sin, the sin to which you turn time after time. Its light in your sky might be strong and ever be drawing your eye, like the headlights of oncoming traffic; or it might fade in and fade out with varying intensity. No matter the case, you probably work hard to avoid looking at it; but in this exercise, you should. In fact, to have mastery over it, you must look at your sin and try to understand it. The principle at play here is that, as our eye is attracted to light, our will is attracted to the good. We are drawn only by what we understand to be good. We want to sin only because we think it will be good for us. Our first step, clearly, is to recognize that sin is not good for us; but we can’t stop there. Looking into sin, we must search to find what true, authentic good lies at the bottom—in other words, what we’re really after. Once we’ve uncovered the good to which we’re attracted in our sin, and once we’re reminded that God is the fulfillment of all our desires, then we can look at the other lights in our sky to see how God might be wanting to give us that exact good in a not-self-destructive way.

I neither want to be too vague to be unhelpful nor too specific to make anyone uncomfortable, so let me go further in one possible direction which, I think, is particularly relevant to young adulthood. I don’t think most people actually understand what’s going on when they’re struggling with “lust.” To my mind, the person who has lust at the level of a vice walks around all day thinking of people as sexual objects for their own gratification. I mean, the viciously lustful person is like the viciously ambitious person who walks into a board room plotting how to seize power, or the viciously greedy person who steals even from the poor, or the viciously angry person who kindles bitterness and hatred in their heart to the blaze of a roaring furnace. I’m not saying I don’t think there aren’t viciously lustful people out there somewhere. But I do think most people who might put themselves in that category are often misdiagnosing themselves and, as a result, failing to treat the real problem and nearly guaranteeing they’ll never defeat it. The narrative that I think holds more often than not is that the person who regularly commits sins of lust—either with themselves or with others—is, in fact, searching for relationship, purpose, and a sense of fulfillment. No matter the sin, the fact of the matter is this: what we cannot obtain for ourselves, we will try to create for ourselves; and if we can’t do that, we will distract ourselves from ourselves for long enough to forget about it. So, what the person struggling with lust—or with any sin—needs to do is (a) identify the good they’re really after; (b) look for the same good in a better place; (c) renounce the sin as a bad place that cannot fulfill us; and (d) move forward in freedom from sin toward the full and perfect good God desires for them.

That, I think, is what it means to look at the sky. In this season of Advent, Christ invites us to look up, look around, and look at ourselves. We are to look at the lights that lead and guide us and to discern his light within them. How is the Lord calling me to find him in the night sky? How does he want to reveal himself to me? Is, perhaps, he hiding where I would least expect to find him? The night sky can often be so dark that even the moon hides from us. But if we take the charge and set our sights toward it, then the Lord will come to us. In fact, he will reveal to us how he has been here, with us, in the darkness, all along. And, because he, the light of the world, is here, the night is over and day is here. In close, let us hear the teaching of St. Paul to the Romans:

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed; the night is far gone, the day is at hand. Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us conduct ourselves becomingly as in the day, not reveling in drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarrelling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires (13:11-14).

Homily preached on Sunday, December 1, 2024 in the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception at Mount St. Mary’s University