13th Sunday in Ordinary Time
June 30, 2013
Collect
Ursulines, Willow Drive, New Rochelle
“O
God, through the grace of adoption you chose us to be children of light”
(Collect).
In
the Creed we speak of Christ’s eternal relationship with the Father as “Light
from Light.” St. John calls him “the
true light that was coming into the world” (1:9) and tells us that Jesus announced
himself as “the light of the world” (8:12).
Our Easter celebration begins with a bonfire, followed by all the
symbolism of the paschal candle and the proclamation that Christ is our light,
that he has conquered the darkness of error, of sin, and of death, and that he
has set us free.
 |
| Easter 2012 at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church, Queens, N.Y. Photo by Rosalind Chan, courtesy of The Deacon's Bench |
The
Collect continues by praying that we “not be wrapped in the darkness of error
but always be seen to stand in the bright light of truth.” It’s one thing to be chosen to be a child of
light, another to make a positive response.
St. John writes that the light came to God’s chosen people, “but the
world did not know him. He came to what
was his own, but his own people did not accept him” (1:10-11), and later he
comments, “The light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light,
because their works were evil” (3:19).
So a prayer that we be rescued from the darkness, that we come into the
light and stand fast in it, is “right and just.”
Certainly
we see regular evidence of people’s love for the darkness, of rejecting truth,
in our own society and in others: the
truth of the natural order of human sexuality; the truth of God’s lordship over
creation; the truth of the human dignity of the unborn, of children, of women,
of immigrants, of refugees; the truth of God’s universal fatherhood which makes
us all sisters and brothers. We see
repeated evidence of people’s wrapping themselves in the darkness of genocide,
of terrorism, of the drug trade, of human trafficking, of environmental
destruction, of the exploitation of workers and investors and retirees, of
cheating in schools, in sports, in boardrooms, and in politics. You and I could continue these catalogs for
quite a while. Each of these forms of
degradation and error is a form of enslavement, a lessening of our freedom.
 |
| The World Trade Center, Feb. 24, 2005 |
Every
historian of the ancient world has remarked on how Christianity changed the
culture for the better, e.g. by teaching respect for women, by defending the
lives of the weak, by caring for the poor and the sick, by eliminating slavery,
and eventually by converting the barbarian invaders. Of course these changes for the better didn’t
always run smoothly, and sometimes there were backward steps—e.g., one thinks
of slavery’s return in the early modern world.
The temptation to wrap ourselves in darkness never goes away! The flesh continually seeks its opportunities
to “bite and devour one another” (Gal 5:15).
The
prayer notes God’s choice. As Jesus said
to the apostles, “You have not chosen me; I have chosen you” (John 15:16). In other words, this is grace, God’s gift to
us: to be chosen, to be adopted, to be
set free from our sins (from our darkness), to come into the light and be
loved—and to share that love, spread that love by “standing in the truth.” We need God’s constant help and strength,
individually, as a community of religious, as a local Church, as a wider
community of persons who—whether they recognize the truth or not—are made in
God’s image and are called to be children of light.
May
these sacred mysteries in which we come to the light, we taste the light, we
absorb the light, give us the help and the strength we need.
[1]
Maria Luce Ronconi, “On jury duty,” Living
City 52 (2013), no. 7 (July), p. 26.
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