by Kevin Duffy

We have now entered the so-called Ordinary Time of the Church’s year. We look back at the celebrations of Christmas and Epiphany and journey forwards to the Paschal season of Lent, Holy Week and Eastertide. In January and February, very gradually the days are lengthening, and the balance of daily light and darkness is changing in favour of light.

Ever since Thomas Edison started mass producing electric light bulbs in New York in 1882, we have lived increasingly in a world of 24/7 illumination. The differences between night and day, and between the different seasons of the year, have to some degree been flattened out.

For Christians of earlier centuries, winter and night were darker than they are for us. Spring, summer and daytime were more light-filled. Without electric light, when they thought of light they thought of sunlight.

When they heard in the gospel that Christ is a light shining in the darkness, this had a depth of meaning that can easily escape us. I think we can say that they understood better what the Bible is saying, and it was easier for them to make the biblical symbolism part of their own experience. When they celebrated Advent and Christmas as we have just done, the shortening of the days in Advent as they approached the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, would have had a more immediate, even physical purchase. Christ himself was often described as the New Sun, the True Sun. At the Vespers of 21 December, he is greeted in these terms: O Rising Sun, Splendour of Eternal Light and Sun of Justice.

What about us? Is all this irretrievably lost?

Kevin Duffy SM is Provincial of the Marist Fathers, Europe