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Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
(Philippians 4:4)

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It was an all day affair.
I knew God was looking deeply into the depths of me and seeing all.
Depths unavailable to me.
There was my Utmost poverty
I thought that day that
God was wanting me to know myself well.
A sinner. Shameful. Petty. I could see them all.

It was only a prelude.

God took it all away. Never to be seen by another eye.
Now I stand on street corners in a way
And shout for joy.
What God reveals is mercy.
The Risen Christ breathes only love and forgiveness.
There is in him
No recrimination.
Ever.
No violence.
Only mercy.
No darkness at all.

Only light transforming all.
Mostly too bright to be seen.
A glimpse was enough to settle me in joy.

- Elizabeth Hillmann

(1. Soul of Christ, sanctify me.)

(2. Body of Christ, save me.)

(3. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.)

(4. Water from the side of Christ, wash me.)

(5. Passion of Christ, strengthen me.)

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O good Jesus, hear me.
Within thy wounds hide me.
O bone Iesu, exaudi me.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.

This is not a gloomy prayer, but it is a realistic one.  At times – no matter how intoxicated we are with the blood of Christ, no matter how strengthened by his Passion – at times we all need a refuge from what hurts or threatens us.  The very best hiding place is Jesus himself, who calls us to share his wounds and who graciously shares all our wounds.

A number of years ago, I had been having a very difficult and painful year.  One morning, helping out away from home for a month or so, I was praying, and I seemed to hear —

— Pardon me, but I need to pause here for a brief aside.  I want to underline the words “I seemed to hear,” because too often people (who as far as I know are not prophets with the right to proclaim, “Thus says the Lord”) — too often people recite verbatim what they have heard from God, as if God were dictating to them precise words in English.

Perhaps I am too suspicious, but I tend to believe that, although God certainly does speak to us, our hearing is not infallible, and we listen inevitably through our personal filters.  I am reminded of the acquaintance who called me one morning with the announcement, “I heard the Lord tell me not to go to work this morning.”  Yeah, right, I thought.  Why doesn’t God give me that message more often?

I am also reminded of the story about the president of a Christian-sponsored university who called a wealthy woman in town and said to her, “Mrs. So-and-So, I spoke to the Lord this morning, and he told me that you were going to give a substantial donation to our fund appeal.”

Whereupon Mrs. So-and-So replied, “Well, Mr. Jones, that’s strange, because I talked to the Lord this morning too, and he didn’t tell me a thing about it.”

But God does speak to us, probably more often in the depth of our hearts than in actual words.  So anyhow, that particular morning, in my own prayer, aware of the long painful months behind me, I seemed to hear God say to me — though not in a voice, rather in my heart — “It will continue to hurt, but I will be with you in it.”

And it was true.  After I returned to the situation I had left, the pain did not cease, but God was with me in the pain.

Note that the proof of my listening was in the living-out.  I accepted what I had heard at the time of hearing it, but it was shown to be of God in the living out of what I had heard.

And it was only in looking back later that I could name my experience a kind of hiddenness in the wounds of Christ.  While this refuge did not shelter me from suffering, I was no longer overwhelmed by it, and the gift of peace was given (limited, I must add, by my ability to receive it).

Within thy wounds, hide me.

When my wounds, when your wounds, are united with the wounds of Christ, then our sufferings become redemptive, not only for ourselves, but for the world.  Saint Paul says in Colossians:

I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (1:24).

Not quite on the theological level of Saint Paul, but still worth paying attention to is Leonard Cohen, whose song, “Anthem,” has this line in the refrain:

“There is a crack, a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.”

Perhaps the cross can be seen as a sacred crack in the universe that lets the divine light in, that divine light that heals and saves and brings peace.  And perhaps our own wounds, united with the wounds of Christ, can be seen as cracks in us that can let in the light of God.

O good Jesus, hear me,
within thy wounds hide me.

O bone Iesu, exaudi me.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.

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“Blue marble” image courtesy of NASA, edited by Rose Hoover, rc

And there is a darkness that is in reality light, but in our limited perception, it seems dark to us. This is a darkness that is as necessary for our growth and spiritual health as nighttime darkness is necessary for some plants to bloom.

This we may call a blessed darkness, a holy darkness.

It may be experienced simply as not being able to see or understand, because we are human and the realm of God is the realm of Holy Mystery. While God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, God is also Other.  God is not like us.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God tells us, “nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).   Sometimes we are given the grace to see how God is working in our lives and to experience in our prayer the light of God’s presence.  But often we can’t see.

One form of this darkness is the experience of waiting on God.

We see an important example of this near the end of the Easter season, after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven.   For a time, the disciples and friends of Jesus, along with Mary his mother, must wait in holy darkness.

Jesus has left them.  At least it seems that way.  Luke tells us in the first chapter of Acts that “a cloud took him out of their sight.”  Before leaving, Jesus had cautioned his disciples “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”  So they go to the Upper Room, the Cenacle, and pray together.  They don’t know what they are supposed to do otherwise.  They don’t know what their mission is to be.  They don’t know how they are supposed to deal with the lack of Jesus’ visible presence in their lives.

This is the holy darkness of waiting in prayer. It means waiting in total dependence on God, since they are helpless on their own to bring about that for which they long.  This is the blessed darkness of Mystery, an obscurity that in reality is the Light and presence of Christ in newness, though experienced as absence and as emptiness and as unknowing, because it can’t yet be perceived until the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

There is a necessary waiting that brings us face to face with our own weakness and need and desire for God, and with the fact that we can’t control God or save ourselves.  It is a waiting that removes our conceit, along with any pride in our spiritual experiences.  We then accept the obscurity of this prayer as sacred, for when we are truly waiting on God, the unknowing that feels like darkness is filled with the invisible light of Christ.

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
(1 John 1:5)

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  Live as children of light…
Ephesians 5:8

When I was a child, my dad, who taught aerospace engineering, would talk to me about “time dilation,” which I still find fascinating these many years later.

I learned that you could start out on a space ship to a distant planet and be away for a only a few years; but when you got home, everyone you knew would be long dead and gone, because time would have slowed down for you in relation to how they were experiencing time on earth.  Time, for a moving object – or a moving person – slows down more and more the closer the speed of the object approaches the speed of light.

Star Trek never seemed to me to take this into account in its adventures.  But in case you’re a Trekkie, I just learned that the Warp Drive on the spaceship Enterprise somehow creates an artificial time-space bubble that solves the problem.

Back on this earth, Einstein showed us that time is not constant.  Time is not an absolute.  It is light, the speed of light that is the constant (but even that is constant only in a vacuum).  And for a moving object, time theoretically would stop at the speed of light – if it were possible for it to reach the speed of light.

Light, not the speed, but light itself, rather than time, is the constant for us as Christians too, for Christ is our light. Christ is the light that never fails: unchanging, unwavering, undimmed.

What is more, we are called to become light.

In the gospel of John, we hear Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8:12)

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:14, 16)

Being light is not automatic, however.  It doesn’t happen just because we call ourselves Christian.  If we are light, it is because we are united with Christ, our Light.  We are light because we walk in the light of Christ, even as we stumble and fall and let ourselves be raised up again.  We are light because we are growing in becoming who Christ is – growing in love, mercy, and compassion; becoming peacemakers; becoming comforters of those who mourn; becoming a healing presence, rather than one of division; taking on the mind and heart of Christ, so that our lives are radiant with the holy Light that dwells within us.

Watch Cybernun’s video illustrating the lyrics of the Russian hymn,
“God, You Are Clothed in Light“

There is a skylight in the bathroom, and during the darker months of the year when the sun has shifted toward the south, the midday light shines right on the faceted cross, which acts as a prism, scattering the spectrum here and there around the room. You couldn’t avoid the colored light if you tried.

We are now moving out of the dark months of the calendar, at the same time that we are approaching Good Friday, the day when the sun was darkened and the One who is our Light was crucified. Nevertheless, we can’t escape the Light, even on Good Friday. It is never extinguished.

As the Gospel of John tells us. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (1:5).

Darkness cannot swallow up the light. This we know, because the light burst forth in splendor on Easter.  On Good Friday itself, as the sun’s light fails, we catch glimpses of the greater Light.

We see this, for example, in the “seven last words” of Jesus from the cross. Among them:

‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’ (Luke 23:34).
‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ (Luke 23:46).

We see it when the veil of the temple is rent, symbolizing our free access to the divine.

We hear it in the words of the centurion who says, “Truly this man was God’s Son” (Mark 15:39 and Matthew 27:54).

We glimpse it in the crowd of people who “returned home, beating their breasts” (Luke 23:48).

And, now, post-Resurrection, we may perceive it in our own lives, in our own dark moments, whenever there is a movement of love or trust or repentance, whenever goodness is apparent in the face of pain or evil.

In winter, in our bathroom, you can’t brush your teeth or sit on the toilet without rainbows adorning your body. Like the sunlight hitting the faceted cross on the bathroom wall, the holy light of Jesus’ cross and resurrection illumines all our human activities, including the ones we consider most earthly.

A wise rabbi once asked his students, “How do you know when the night is over and the day has dawned?

One answered, “When you can look at an animal in the distance and tell whether it is a sheep or a dog?”

“No,” said the rabbi.

Another said, “Is it when you can look at a tree and tell whether it is a fig or an olive tree?”

“No,” said the rabbi.

“Please, rabbi, tell us.  How do you know when the night is over and the day has dawned?”

The rabbi answered, “You know that the day has dawned when you can look at any man or woman and discern there the face of your brother or sister.  Until then, you are still in the night.”

Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem!  Your light has come,
the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the LORD shines,
and over you appears his glory.

Isaiah 60:1-2

On the other hand, the Bible does indicate some spiritual clothes that never go out of style. These are symbolized by the white garment which the neophytes, the new Catholics, received during the Easter Triduum.

We read in Galatians 3:27,

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.

Being clothed with Christ is an amazing thought; and if we carry the image of the garment one step further, it becomes even more astonishing. Psalm 104 tells us that God is “wrapped in light as with a garment,” and it seems that a garment of light is not only fitting garb for the divine, but also for us. In the Eastern rite Catholic churches (and the Orthodox churches), when the newly baptized receive the white garment, these words are sung:

Grant me a Robe of Light,
You who are robed in Light
as with a garment,
O Christ our God, so rich in mercy.

(See Baptism – Saint Elias Church)

Here are some of the results of putting on this robe of light — which is another way of saying that we have put on Christ.

First, all those differences that tend to cause division become unimportant when we are clothed with Christ:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3: 27-28)

Next, there are some very practical effects, including some rather awesome responsibilities, connected with this apparel.

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3: 12-14)

And in the long run, we allow our mortal bodies to be clothed with immortality:

For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. (1 Cor 15:53)

If this new garment is not just made of white cloth, but is in truth a robe of light, it would seem to be a rather exalted form of dress for us lowly human beings. I imagine all of us, whether new Catholics or seasoned Christians, have already learned to our sorrow that we do not lead perfect lives after baptism.

But — oh, wonder of wonders! — Jesus does not wait until we are perfected to offer the robe. He gives it to us, and then calls us to grow into it.

The process of growing into that garment of light is called sanctification.

Now in a very important sense, we are already holy: each of us is God’s child — one of God’s holy ones. But sanctification means becoming more and more like Christ in our hearts, in our minds, and in our daily lives, more and more one with the compassion, mercy and love of God.

Can we wear the robe of light, taking on the mind and heart of Christ, while we are promoting war, or ignoring the plight of the poor, or saying nasty things about our next-door neighbor? We must choose to live so that to encounter us is to touch the hem of Christ’s garment; so that by grace our presence will be the healing presence of Christ for our fractured world.

“Who are these robed in white?” we ask, like the elder in the book of Revelation, “and where have they come from?” (7:13)

These are God’s people. We have come from here and from all over. We have put on Christ and are growing in holiness — often failing, but always forgiven, always praying to become more and more the presence of Christ for the world, so that to meet us is to meet Christ.