The Darkness Did Not Overcome

[A reflection on the Gospel for the First Sunday after Christmas, which may be found at https://www.episcopalchurch.org/lectionary/christmas-1-a/ along with the other readings for Mass.]

Darkness is all about us. Millions suffer around the world, victims of war, oppression, marginalization, or sheer neglect. Wars rage across the earth, random violence pops up in seemingly secure and sedate locales, and crushing poverty drags down whole neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. Political leaders espouse downright evil policies, dressed up in façades of respectability, religiosity, and purported freedom, distorting the truth to suit their and their followers' bigotry, biases, and prejudices. Quackery hides as medicine, leading to needless deaths worldwide, as the sciences, fueled by God-given reason, are abandoned by pseudo-research. People use each other without regard to their dignity, sovereignty, or their status as images of God most high. Despair stalks the land, shrouded in the darkness of the events around us.

Yet we proclaim something that is wonderful amidst this darkness. The Light has come into the world and shines amidst this Darkness. The Darkness tries its damnedest [deliberate choice of adjective] to overshadow it, to overpower it, to shutter it, to extinguish it, but whenever we turn and behold it, its brilliance obliterates the Darkness around it. It is majesty amidst humility, power in powerlessness, preeminence in being the servant of all. Some two millennia ago, God chose to become one of us, His creation, to render the Darkness impotent, to show the powerful that their power is not the last word, to show the mighty they matter least in the Kingdom of Heaven. He came down so that we could turn from the Darkness to the Light, to abandon the Way of Despair for the Way of Hope, to turn from Death to Life.

While we look at the Darkness all about us, hope seems gone, but when we turn to the Light, we know that the Darkness will eventually be abolished. It may have its sway now, but in time the Light will fully banish it, for the Word became Flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.