Light In Our Darkness

Inevitably, during seasons of official gladness, there are people who do not feel that they, or their situation, are in step with the times. If you are Syrian and have lost your home, your livelihood and all those who are dear to you, or if someone you love has suddenly been visited by tragedy, like the family of Ann Maguire along with the staff and pupils of Corpus Christi College, it is hard to know what to make of Christian joy, specifically the joy of the Resurrection. The Resurrection seems all of a sudden remote and Easter itself irrelevant. At the same time, there is a lingering and deep-seated joy that will not quite go away. It will not be blacked out by sadness, even the deepest sadness, because if the reality of that world changing redemptive morning could be completely blacked out, it would not be real in the fullest sense. It is the very persistence of this unique and paradoxical joy, the way it is so deeply ingrained in the human psyche, as a sign of the relief of forgiveness and the hope which that brings, which make both joy and the Resurrection itself real. We see the reality of Christ’s risen life in all those who are caught up in suffering. There is no aspect of human life, whether good or bad, which makes sense by itself and this is a sign that we cannot live detached from one another. Our individual suffering is not unique because it is part of someone else’s.

There is also no overarching theory of suffering which can make it more bearable. What then is the point of suffering? and, some may ask, of life itself? The fact that this question gets asked indicates protest, and protest is always directed at someone or something, even if directing it is an unintentional movement of the subconscious towards understanding. There is a further twist to suffering, an even greater mystery; those who do much of the protesting, perhaps even most of it, are not the ones going through the agony itself, but the onlookers, the family and the helpers. The helpers, it seems, are helpless where suffering is most acute.

But it is often the helpers, the family, the friends who love the one who is suffering, who are most conscious of the mystery of suffering. The mystery is the light shining out of darkness. It is the courage of one’s suffering child revealed to us as we have always known it in the glimmer of a tear, or of a smile, when he or she is confronting the depths of their own darkness, whatever that happens to be. In such moments we see that the light has not been consumed by the darkness, but is taking it over, or transforming it, to paraphrase the beginning of St. John’s gospel.

This, you may think, is all very well in theory, but how can such an understanding of light consuming darkness become a reality in the context of our own suffering, or in the suffering of someone we love as we stand by and watch? Doing or saying something may only make matters worse. It seems, therefore, that meaning will only emerge out of the silent witness of love. This is the reality. But coming to terms with this fact, and at the same time remaining faithful, is a costly and lonely business because their darkness is their own, and ours belongs, ultimately, only to us. Thus, a greater and more impenetrable darkness seems to exist between the two of us.

The light does not illuminate the darkness by imparting meaning to this suffering, or by showing that it has an obvious purpose. Rather, it is a different kind of light, one which is its own brightness. The brightness is so intense that it ‘consumes’ the darkness. It does not replace it, but makes the darkness part of itself, so that eventually we shall see that the suffering of those we love, and the darkness it brings, is part of that divine and inextinguishable light. St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians writes that now we see only dimly, but then face to face. Then we shall see our suffering, which is joined to the suffering of those we love, bound up in the suffering of Christ and consumed by it. Its mystery is its meaning, which will be fully revealed in the brightness of his risen body.

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