Light Up the World!

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Advent, candle, Christ, Desert Fathers and Mothers, flame, hearts, light, meditate, monastics, Sophia House, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

Paris, – lighting candles in notre dame cathedral… Calgary, Alberta Canada. Photographer Carlos Amat, http://www.carlosamat.ca

Last night I attended a lovely evening of reflection with a small study group held at Sophia House, our “satellite office” in Endicott, NY. The presenter forgot her matches so I foraged around the house and in the adjacent building and found nothing that could help us light the candle that was to be the centerpiece of our prayer table. Sensing the importance of the symbol, I was grateful to meet up with the janitor who led me to his office where he had not one but three long-nosed lighters. He gifted me with one which now will stay in my office for just such events.

As we travel through this season of Advent, lighting a new candle each week in church and/or at home, praying for the light of Christ to burn in our hearts, I am often reminded of a familiar story from those first monastics, the Desert Fathers and Mothers who understood our responsibility to become that light for the world that we say we desire.

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, “Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace, and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?” The old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, “If you will, you can become all flame!”

So as we prepare for Christmas, in the midst of all that we do, why not have as our intention to increase our desire for God so that we do, indeed, become all flame?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Candlelight

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candle, hungry, Jesus, loaves and fishes, Mark, The Sophia Center for Spirituality

This morning, Mark tells his version of the loaves and the fishes (Ch 8:1-10). What stood out to me – besides the great compassion of Jesus for the people, many of whom had come “a great distance” to listen to him – was that the question Jesus asks is, “How many loaves do you have?” Initially, I thought maybe there were no fish in his telling of the miracle. Just before the distribution, Mark mentions that they also had “a few fish” but by then I had already begun to sing an old Joe Wise song whose refrain tells us:

If you share your bread with the hungry, if you bind up the wounds of the soul, then will your true love shine, then will your true love shine for all the world to see like a city on a hill, like a candle burning quiet in the night.

So it seems that it takes an inner willingness to share. Opening our hands is only a spontaneous movement if we have practiced it for awhile. Then the result is more than a good feeling or something for which we are praised, although people will, in fact, notice and perhaps be moved to imitate our generosity. We will not need a reward because we will understand what it is to act as God acts toward us, and our hearts will burn with the love that is as pure and brilliant as the light of a single candle in the dark.