Reflections on Light at Lent

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And so we have entered Lent, the liturgical season of darkness. We began with a smudge of ash to remind us that soon we will be buried in the dust from which we were formed. Death also was reflected in the vestments of the minister who applied the ash to our foreheads – the color for the season is purple, symbolic of mourning. Purple also is associated with royalty, fitting for the King of Kings, unlike the shade of the Prince of Darkness.

This prince is the same Father of Lies who tempted Jesus at the end of his 40 days in the desert, as we will hear when the Gospel is proclaimed on Sunday. Our Lord’s time of prayer and fasting in the wasteland is the model for our own Lenten journey, during which we are meant to confront the darkness of sin in our lives.  

Darkness is the absence of light. It is light that allows us to perceive objects and especially color, as the ancient Greek philosophers noted. Plotinus commented that a color’s beauty is derived from the presence of incorporeal light, and the 11th-century Catholic theologian Hugh of Saint Victor remarked that color adds much beauty to nature. For Hugh and other medieval thinkers, nature revealed God. St. Augustine of Hippo went a step further and declared that nature is in fact a reflection of the divine image. Following that train of thought, all resplendent things mirror God, who is love and truth and a diadem of beauty.

Made in God’s image, we ourselves are meant to be beautiful creatures, but beauty of any sort can be hidden by darkness. During Lent we are called to confront the corruption of our own beauty brought about by sin. Our goal is to come to the life that is the light of men, the light that shines in the darkness, the light that darkness has not overcome. Like the light that illuminates the universe but is never consumed, the light to whom John the Baptist bore witness will never be vanquished by darkness. This, then, gives us the hope that if we turn toward the true light that never was touched by sin and enlightens everyone, it will shine in our darkness and brighten our way.

During Lent we turn toward that light through prayer and penance and almsgiving, hoping that after mourning the sinfulness that led to not only our own death but that of the innocent one, with the sunrise of Easter will come a new day. We have this hope because God is kind and merciful, ever reaching to take us into his embrace, as we heard last Sunday, when a leper dared to break free of his society’s constraints, which required that he keep himself 6 feet from any other person. He gathered his courage and, violating the law, approached Jesus, knelt and begged to be made clean. If we follow his example, by grace we may hear Our Lord say the words we long for: “Be made clean,” and too he might shatter the bounds of the righteousness to which he is entitled, stretch out his hand and touch us with his love and forgiveness.

Visible light is comprised of all the hues of the rainbow, and light reveals the beauty of each unique shade. In Christ’s light we ourselves are individual colors who together constitute his Church, and through this penitential time of Lent we polish ourselves so that come Easter we may rise with him and shine more brightly, reflecting the light from the lamp that is the Lamb.

Marie Mischel is editor of the Intermountain Catholic.