Light of Christ
“ “Light” is not a metaphysical definition of the person of Jesus but a description of His effect on the world, forcing everyone in the world to ‘choose up sides’ for or against Him…The light of truth increases and decreases according to a man's way of life. Terrible temptations fall upon those who seek to live a spiritual life. The ascetic of faith must therefore pass through great sufferings and misfortunes in order to come to knowledge of the truth.” (NET Bible, John 9:5, St. Isaac of Nineveh)
“…human beings are too weak to bear God’s immutable Light, and so His light reaches us with diminished radiance in the things of creation in order that we might use these material things to ascend to Him.” (Robin Phillips)
“Opening our darkened souls to His brilliant light is requires persistence, vigilance, and humility. We pray and realize how easily our minds wander. We fast just a bit and realize how addicted we are to food and drink. We take Confession and realize that we continue to struggle with the same sins. We give just a bit to the needy and realize how stingy we are. The difficult truth is that transformation in holiness does not occur on our schedule or according to our preferences. It certainly is not a process focused on helping us feel more righteous. The more finely tuned our spiritual vision is, the more we will be aware of our need for healing, transformation, and fulfillment beyond what we could ever give ourselves. As long as we approach our faith as a way of controlling God to get the spiritual results that we want on our own schedule and in our own way, we will never be transfigured in holiness. For that is simply a path to even greater captivity to the spiritual pride that blinds us to the truth of where stand before the Lord, who remains eternally the great “I AM” of the Burning Bush. No one can control or use Him.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Examine yourself oftener; where the eyes of your heart are looking. Are they turned towards God and the life to come, towards the most peaceful calm, blessed, resplendent, heavenly, holy powers dwelling in heaven? Or are they turned towards the world towards earthly blessings; to food, drink, dress, abode, to sinful vain men and their occupations? O that the eyes of our heart were always fixed upon God! But it is only in need or misfortune that we turn our eyes to the Lord, whilst in the time of prosperity our eyes are turned towards the world and its vain works. But what, you would ask, will this looking to God bring me? It will bring the deepest peace and tranquility to your heart, light to your mind, holy zeal to your will, and deliverance from the snares of the enemy. ‘Mine eyes are ever looking unto the Lord,’ said David…” (St. John of Kronstadt)
“The spiritual benefits of being bathed in the light should be obvious to all believers. But, in order to see that light, to hear those words, we will have to silence all other voices, including our own—voices that are constantly competing for our attention. In other words, with the help of the Scriptures and prayer, we will have to intentionally establish a quiet place of heart and mind in which the light-giving words of God are not being drowned out by other words/thoughts.” (Fr. Edward Rommen)
“…God created the world in this mystical manner: a Theophany appeared over the face of chaos and the watery deep, and this Theophany was so beautiful that non-being itself fell in love with it. Eros for this divine appearing moved so strongly within unformed matter that it repented of its prior state of being neither well-formed nor beautiful, dropped its “nets” (it’s pointless “concern” with itself), and moved towards the Light, taking on being and thus beautiful form in the process.” (Timothy G. Patitsas)
“Both Genesis 1 and John 1 describe light penetrating the darkness with divine order. Luke’s parallel Gospel account similarly draws on imagery from Genesis 1 when the Angel Gabriel announced to the Holy Virgin, “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” (Robin Phillips)
“Light has a unique metaphysical and physical status, an absolutely singular place in the universe. Light is the one ultimate Constant upon which everything else both in nature itself and in our knowledge of it depends. If the speed of light were to vary, the whole universe would be disorderly and chaotic and would not be rationally or scientifically apprehensible. It is thus ultimately by reference to the “mathematical properties of light that all our knowledge of the universe is gained; for light signals, the fastest messengers in the universe, are laden with information, so that all we know about the universe microphysically or macrophysically is gained through deciphering the mathematical patterns of light. Thus singularity has been found to belong to the fundamental structure of the created universe, and the concept of singularity has become inalienably lodged in the foundation and rational structure of scientific knowledge.” (Thomas Torrance)
“Jesus even witnesses to His divinity by using the Old Testament name of God for Himself, the egō eimi, the “I AM,” including when He says in John 8: 12, “I AM (egō eimi) the Light of the world; he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of Life.” Christ as Light connects to the theme of “glory” again. His Light is a guiding light, showing the way out of the darkness of ignorance, unbelief, and all other kinds of darkness. As physical light allows us to see things, this Light does so even more, simply by its presence; and it also reveals all things as they truly are, both the good and the bad. Hence it is linked to judgment as well. We see this, for example, in John 3: 19: “the light has come into the world,” but some prefer darkness “because their deeds are evil.” (Dr. Mary S. Ford)
“…the Holy Scripture says, if the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matt. 6:23). A person must first of all realize—and this is the task of each of us—that he has blindness. He must see his inner darkness, which hinders him very much. And this darkness very often disguises itself and pretends to be light. A person thinks that he has light, but inside he has only real darkness. Every person is a parable for us. It is not abstract for anyone. This is a very important parable for us. Each of us is also a blind man by the roadside. We are sitting by this road of life. Every day we try to pray more, put more trust in God, and pray the Jesus prayer, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. And it really resembles the cry that this blind man cried out today. Every day the Lord, perhaps not audible to us, answers our prayer, Receive your sight, for your faith has saved you.” (Igumen Tikhon Borisov)
“…darkness can never overpower the light of Christ, nor can it understand the way of love…To choose to follow Christ is to accept Christ’s choosing you! (John 15:16). To be His disciple, is to live in Christ while still living in this world. To be a Christian is to shine with the light of Christ (Matthew 5:14).…the knowledge of our own weakness, how it is that we are broken, is only made possible by the light of Christ, a light that simultaneously illumines the darkness, a strength made perfect in weakness. “It is,” St Isaac of Syria affirmed, “a spiritual gift of God to be able to perceive one’s own sins.” Moreover, to plumb the depths of our fallenness is to scale the heights of divine love.” (Orthodox Study Bible, John 1:5, Fr. Ted Bobosh, Fr. John Behr)
“…we must mindfully open the eyes of our souls to the brilliant light of Christ. That means offering our concerns to God through prayer on a daily basis as we turn our attention to the words of the Jesus Prayer and away from worried, intrusive thoughts. It means reading the Psalms in order to learn how to cry out to God from the depths with persistent trust, instead of wallowing in despair. It means refusing to make gratifying any passion the measure or purpose of our lives. It means repudiating the idols we have been worshipping and struggling to seek first the Kingdom of God in how we live each day.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Those living in this darkness are unable to apprehend the light of Christ, unable to distinguish light from darkness, truth from lie (John 1). Caught up in this same darkness many in the Church have also been blinded to truth and aimlessly wander around in the shadows where the true light is replaced with its opposite—“a different gospel” (Gal. 1.6), the uninspired imaginings of darkened minds…As a result, many are leaving the Church while many of its remaining members continue in the shadows, their commitment nominal at best. This does not mean that all is lost. There is, as promised in Scripture, a group of spiritually-minded believers who are still in the Church, who still speak and live by the truth. But, given the overwhelming power of the forces of darkness, these hold-outs are a small, misunderstood, and sometimes even mistreated minority—what Scripture calls a Remnant —within the Church.” (Fr. Edward Rommen)
“Christianity is not reconciliation with death. It is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of Life. Christ is this Life. And only if Christ is Life is death what Christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed, and not a “mystery” to be explained. Religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a “status,” a rationale, make it “normal.” Only Christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible. At the grave of Lazarus Christ wept, and when His own hour to die approached, “he began to be sore amazed and very heavy.” In the light of Christ, this world, this life are lost and are beyond mere “help,” not because there is fear of death in them, but because they have accepted and normalized death. (Fr. Alexander Schmemann)
“The Light of Christ isn’t an imposition, forced upon us by propaganda or brainwashing. It’s a discreet call to repentance, a sweet awakening into participation in a life that’s royal…Blessed are they who see Christ’s invitation to repentance as the opening of a window onto the true Light, as a foray into the ‘freedom of the glory of the children of God (Rom. 8, 21).” (Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos)
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