Along the Way by Deacon Charles Rohrbacher March 10, 2010 Light of Christ! Thanks Be to God! Yesterday I received a note from a friend of mine in Tuntutuliak, (a village on the Kuskowkim River in southwestern Alaska), who closed his letter with these words: God's good blessing on you in this holy season as the Day of our Lord's Resurrection becomes brighter and brighter with each passing day. What a moving image of Lent for us here in Alaska as we slowly journey from winter to spring. While it might be easy to regard Lent and Holy Week as simply a dreary (if necessary) preliminary to
Easter, my friend s blessing was a welcome reminder that the entire season of Lent is shot through with the light of Easter. Just as the sun rises a few minutes earlier and sets a few minutes later each day as we move into spring, so too does the light of the risen Christ enable me to see with greater clarity and precision during the forty days of Lent. His blessing reminded me of how the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults invites us to celebrate the season of Lent. Drawing upon its ancient tradition, the Church calls on us as the baptized faithful to enter into the forty days as a time of Purification and Enlightenment. During the six weeks of Lent, if we are fortunate enough in our parish or mission to have elect (catechumens declared ready for baptism, confirmation and eucharist at the upcoming Easter Vigil) preparing for the Easter sacraments we are invited to join them in their intense spiritual preparation. The Church speaks of this period as one intended to purify the minds and hearts of the elect as they search their own consciences and do penance as well as to enlighten the minds and hearts of the elect with a deeper knowledge of Christ the Savior. [139 RCIA] We should pay attention to that word enlightenment. Light is a powerful symbol both of the power of the resurrection in our lives and of baptism, which in the early Church was spoken of as t illuminatio (enlightenment). As the baptized, we have, in the words of the baptismal rite, been enlightened by Christ. and rite speaks of the elect as the illuminandi (those who will be enlightened) and during the period of Lent. There are two aspects to our enlightenment in Christ. The brighter and brighter light of the Lord s Resurrection during Lent enables me recognize what is weak and broken in myself: my failure to love God
and my neighbor as I should, and my need for the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus. During the days of Lent, I have found the light of the daily and the Sunday Mass readings have shone a bright and uncompromising light both on the particular ways that sin has a grip on my life (I ll spare you the humiliating details) and on the remedies which Christ, the Physician and Healer of our souls and bodies, provides. But if the light of the Day of the Lord s Resurrection growing brighter and brighter with each passing day of Lent was only throwing into sharper and sharper relief my failings, faults and sins, it would be a torment rather than a blessing. But Christ, our Light and our Hope, by his saving death and lifegiving resurrection, has triumphed over the power of sin and death, in my life and in yours. The light of Christ reveals not only my weaknesses and my sins, but my true nature and our true nature, that we are men and women created for adoption by the Father, for communion and for glory. Throughout the world, in the darkness at this coming Easter Vigil, the Church s minister will hold up the Paschal candle and proclaim with joy, Lumen Christi! (the Light of Christ) and we, the people of God will respond Deo gratias! (Thanks be to God!). In the Light of Christ which has overcome the darkness, we will hear again the story which we never grow tired of listening to, of God s faithful love for the human beings he created out of love. Even in their folly and disobedience, God never abandoned them. It is in the Light of Christ that we will proclaim the awesome news that the Father sent us a Savior, his own beloved Son, who out of love for us rescued us from the power of sin and death, when the Light of
the world descended into the utter darkness and desolation of death itself. And it is in Light of Christ that our elect will be baptized and we will renew our baptismal promises: rejecting sin and professing our faith. But for us, as men and women who have died and risen to new life in the waters of baptism, it would be a mistake to understand the Light of Christ as somehow external to us. No, we are filled with that Light which has transformed and transfigured each of us in Christ. Each year when we renew our baptism at Easter, we are not simply recommitting ourselves to love God and love our neighbor (as essential and unconditional as that commitment is). We are invited, if we open our eyes, to see ourselves and our neighbors as we really are, not as miserable sinners and outcasts, but clothed, through baptism in our dignity as the women and men that God intended and created us to be. As the great Church Father, St.Ireneaus so famously said: The glory of God is the human being fully alive. To see ourselves and others aright as beloved sons and daughters of the Father who share in his glory is a way of seeing that calls us to greater love, compassion and service for every person in the human family. There at the font at the Easter Vigil, the godparents of the newly baptized ( the neophytes lit. new creation ) will clothe them in the white garment and the bishop or priest will say these words: You have become a new creation and have clothed yourselves in Christ. Receive this baptismal garment and bring it unstained to the judgement seat of our Lord Jesus Christ,
so that you may have everlasting life. Each of us, at our own baptism received the white garment. (This is why, as a reminder of our baptismal dignity and enlightenment in Christ, we wear white for first communion, confirmation and marriage.) On the Second Sunday of Lent we caught a brief glimpse of this in the image of Jesus, transfigured on Mt.Tabor. Filled with light, his garments became as bright and dazzling as the sun. At Easter, when we too, having died and risen with Christ in the waters of baptism, should remember that the light and glory of Jesus on Mt.Tabor, transfigures each of us in our own baptism. In the words of the great 20 th century Russian Orthodox theologian, Fr.Alexander Schmemann: The post baptismal vesting in the robe of light signifies above all the return to the integrity and innocence we had in paradise, the recovery of our true nature obscured and mutilated by sin. St.Ambrose compares the baptismal robe to the vestments of Christ on Mt.Tabor. The transfigured Christ reveals perfect and sinless humanity as not naked but vested in garments white like snow in the uncreated light of divine glory. It is paradise, not sin, that reveals our true nature; it is to paradise and to our true nature, to our primordial vestment of glory, that we return to in baptism.