Led into Light
The man born blind, the Paschal Candle and the slow enlightenment of faith
Water and light are two crucial elements of baptism. Just like water, light is one of those basic things we just can’t do without. I learnt that particularly here in England during those prolonged stretches with no sun, when I really understood the expression “yearning for light”!
That longing helps us enter into the Gospel of the man born blind. The healing happens soon after Jesus has declared: “I am the light of the world” (Jn 8,12). The man not only sees daylight for the first time; more deeply, he comes to see Christ. St John makes the baptismal symbolism quite plain: the healing is completed when the man washes in the pool of Siloam, which means “Sent”. By trusting the One sent by the Father, he comes to the true light.
That is why, in the early centuries, Baptism was often called photismos — enlightenment. We baptised are enlightened people: not because we know everything, but because our lives have been flooded by a light from above that gives the warmth of God’s love and offers meaning to an otherwise dim existence.
And yet today’s Gospel is consoling because it also shows that this enlightenment is gradual. Not everything is given at once. The light given in Baptism is also meant to guide us through life. The blind man’s understanding of Jesus grows step by step, just as ours must. At first Jesus is simply “the man called Jesus”; then “a prophet”; later “one sent by God”; and only at last does he call him “Lord” and fall prostrate in faith.
That gradual enlightenment is enacted before our eyes at the Easter Vigil. As we process with the Paschal Candle and sing Lumen Christi three times, the church fills little by little with light. The Paschal Candle recalls the pillar of fire that led Israel through the wilderness. We too follow that light towards the Promised Land. Like the Israelites, we too falter, doubt, complain, and lose heart in the journey. Yet God’s light doesn’t abandon His people.
John Henry Newman knew this. After illness and uncertainty on his return from Sicily, while becalmed off Sardinia, he wrote the hymn we know as Lead, Kindly Light, originally titled The Pillar of the Cloud — again invoking that divine light which leads God’s people on.
Like Newman, as we journey through this life, we do not ask to see the distant scene; one step is enough for us. For there were times when we loved to choose and see our path for ourselves, when pride ruled our will. But now, instead, turning to Christ, the Light of the world, we pray: “Lead, Kindly Light, amid th’encircling gloom, lead Thou me on. The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on!”
Picture from Wikimedia Commons
