Our faith God’s love in the luminous darkness

So many people find this time of year quite difficult. The days are short and cold, and the nights seem endless. The anxieties of this world become louder in our ears, and the glare of social media is blinding. Sleep can be a difficult friend to find at these times. She may come for a while but always seems to leave at 3 a.m. Why 3 a.m.? I don’t know. But I think she is reminding me to speak to Our Lord, who had a difficult 3 o’clock hour as well. Lying awake in the inky pitch of night can feel lonely and disconcerting, but then I ponder the words of Gerard Manly Hopkins as he considered the “luminous darkness.” What is the loving presence that surrounds me? The love of the Father who never leaves my side. The love that even consoled the fevered mind of an artist like Vincent Van Gogh, who could see in the luminous darkness a beautiful starry night.

St. Paul shares a secret of enduing the darkness of this season with the Philippians. He tells them, “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your request known to God. Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus” (Phil 4:6-7). The peace of God in our hearts and minds – isn’t that what we long for when we are in the darkness? St. Paul continues, “…whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about those things” (Phil 4:8). The secret is to reject the fears exaggerated in our 3 a.m. minds and look up to the skies to see the brilliance of our Creator’s work, of the luminous darkness, of stars and planets, of the moon and perhaps even fog or rain, and all created by the loving hand of God our Father. As we surrender ourselves, our fears and anxiety, our sadness and needs to His Divine Will, we will begin to see the truth of Zachariah’s canticle. “In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Pope Francis

FEB. 5-11

Sunday: Isaiah 58:7-10, 1 Corinthians

2:1-5, Matthew 5:13-26; Monday (St. Paul Miki and Companions): Genesis 1:1-19, Mark

6:53-56; Tuesday: Genesis 1:20-2:4a, Mark

7:1-13; Wednesday (St. Jerome Emiliani, St. Josephine Bakhita): Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-17, Mark 7:14-23; Thursday: Genesis 2:18-25, Mark 7:24-30; Friday (St. Scholastica): Genesis 3:1-8, Mark 7:31-37; Saturday (Our Lady of Lourdes): Genesis 3:9-24, Mark

8:1-10

Christians must not “put pressure on others” to convert or induce in them “feelings of guilt,” but take a weight off their shoulders through joyfully sharing the Gospel, Pope Francis said.

At his general audience Jan. 25, the pope explained that Jesus frees people from all forms of oppression and that this freedom is cause for joy.

“Oppressed is the one who feels crushed by something that happens in life: illness, struggles, burdens on the heart, feelings of guilt, errors, vices, sins,” said Pope Francis. “Let us think, for example, about feelings of guilt. How many of us have suffered from this?”

“If someone feels guilty about something they did and they feel bad,” he said, “the good news is that with Jesus this ancient evil of sin, which seems unbeatable, no longer has the last word.”

“God forgets all of our sins, He has no memory of them,” the pope said. Even if someone repeatedly commits the same sins, God also “will always do the same thing: forgive you, embrace you.”

Pope Francis added that Christians must be joyful in sharing the Gospel, since “the faith is a stupendous love story to be shared.”

Bearing witness to Jesus, he said, involves communicating “a gift so beautiful that words cannot express it. But when joy is missing, the Gospel does not come through” since the Gospel itself is a proclamation of joy.

“A sad Christian can speak about beautiful things, but it is all in vain if the message he or she conveys is not happy,” he said.

FEB. 12-18

Sunday: Sirach 15:15-20, 1 Corinthians

Matthew 5:17-37; Monday: Genesis

Hebrews 11:1-7, Mark 9:2-13

FEB. 19-25

Sunday: Leviticus 19:1-2, 17-18, 1 Corinthians 3:16-23, Matthew 5:38-48; Monday: Sirach 1:1-10, Mark 9:14-29; Tuesday (St. Peter Damian): Sirach 2:1-11, Mark 9:30-37; Wednesday (Ash Wednesday): Joel 2:12-18, 2 Corinthians 5:20-6:2, Matthew 6:1-6, 16-18; Thursday (St. Polycarp):

Christians are called to be guides who lead others to accept God’s love. For Christians, he said, “life is no longer a blind march to nowhere” determined by chance, health or even finances, but an invitation to love.

Pope Francis urged Christians to joyfully share the message to the poor and said that God calls on each person to make themselves interiorly poor.

The quickest way to encounter Jesus, he said, is to “put yourself in need: in need of grace, in need of forgiveness, in need of joy, and He will come to you.”