In a world in which dispelling darkness is as simple as flipping a switch, many of us have lost sight (no pun intended) of how often light is used as a metaphor for our Catholic faith. We catch a glimpse of it during the ceremony of the new fire at the beginning of the Easter Vigil, and the elevation of the Easter candle by the priest as he intones Lumen Christi (“Christ, our light”), and we reply Deo gratias (“Thanks be to God”).
But until the advent of electric light, it meant something visceral to Christians to say that Christ is our light, the God who became man in the dead of winter to dispel the darkness of the world, and who rose radiant from a pitch-black tomb at dawn on Easter morning. Throughout most of the time that man has walked the earth, night was dark in a way that it no longer is for most of us, and for four or five months of the year, it was long and cold, too.