POST TENEBRAS LUX

BY CATRIONA MURRAY POST TENEBRAS LUX

IwIsh chIldren stIll read books as my generatIon dId, for the pure pleasure of the thIng.

Of course I know that they have many more sophisticated distractions than we had (Atari Pong and Etch-a-Sketch have not aged well), but the simple joy of reading still transports me back to a time when stories were my portal to adventure and possibilities beyond anything Lewis in the 1980s could offer.

At this season of the year, I remember a particular favourite, one in which the action took place at Christmas, culminating in a Twelfth Night showdown of epic proportions. Not the sort of row you see nowadays on the ‘Eastenders’ New Year’s Day special, but a real earth-shaking clash of good against evil.

The Dark is Rising was not, as far as I am aware, written from any Christian perspective. Indeed, I believe the author — Susan Cooper — is on record as saying the moral of the book is that we need to help ourselves out of trouble. She did not think that people should believe someone else would rescue them. It is, in that sense, the antithesis of what Christianity teaches.

And yet, she wrote so beautifully of the two forces: the Light and the Dark. Those who belonged to each were engaged in this age-old battle, while the rest of the mortal world remained oblivious. The book’s protagonist, a young boy named Will, lives at the heart of a boisterous, loving family, not one of whom seemed aware that he was in constant peril from the Dark, nor that he was actively engaged in defending the Light from the moment of his eleventh birthday.

Whatever the author’s own private beliefs, I think she captures perfectly the driving force that we understand as ‘good’. Towards the end of the novel, she says, ‘It was not from malice that the Light and the servants of the Light would ever hound the Dark, but from the nature of things’

Good — in the true sense of the word — is not subjective. I may do what is good in my own sight, but the action may be frowned upon by God. Indeed, I have done so many times, and grieved him in the process. The only plumb-line by which to measure good is God himself. He IS good; we cannot even understand it. And so, it is the nature of things, just as Susan Cooper wrote, that the Light should be the enemy of the Dark, and pursue it to the last. It is a particularly good metaphor at a time of year when we mark the birth of Christ and all that would follow on as the redemptive plan unfolded. ‘The people who were walking in darkness have seen a great light.’

Christmas is celebrated with a blaze of bulbs and fire. It seems fitting to mark the birth of the light incarnate with such a display.

He did not come that first time in a blaze of light, however. Humbly born, lit by primitive candles, the baby that was the Son of God cast aside his rightful glory to become the weakest and lowliest of beings. The people — the animals, even — who surrounded his manger had more strength than he. When danger came, he was borne away in his mother’s arms, not by his own power.

Yet, that tiny child would grow up to vanquish the Darkness.

He did not come in a blaze of glory that first time, but the risen Christ is different. Having accomplished the defeat of death itself and led it away captive, the risen Christ is not the baby of ‘Away in a Manger’. Look for his likeness in another carol entirely:

‘Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.’

At this year end, you may well have a sense that the dark is rising. It has been a difficult time for the world and some fear the destruction that seems to stalk our land. But think, when Twelfth Night comes, if Christ is at home in your heart, you need fear no force of evil, no foe, no plague. Our Saviour need not hound the Dark, for where he is, it cannot encroach.As Bede so wisely and wonderfully said:

‘Christ is the morning star who, when the night of this world is past, brings to his saints the promise of the light of life and opens everlasting day.’

He rose so that the Dark could not. Be near to him only, and you are always safe.•