To the Beloved in Christ at Ashmont

Dear Friends: Jesus was born at night - he was born in the darkness, a darkness that was both literal and figurative. As St. John tells us, “The Light shined in the darkness.”

{grid8}We all know about darkness.  As little kids we were scared of the dark. Even as we mature, we still identify night with fear, apprehension, and lostness.  We know what it means to be “in the dark.”  We know about gloom.  We have experienced “the dark night of the soul.”  W.H. Auden writes:


Darkness and snow descend;
The clock on the mantelpiece
Has nothing to recommend,
Nor does the face in the glass
Appear nobler than our own
As darkness and snow descend
On all personality.
Huge crowds mumble - “Alas,
Our angers do not increase,
Love is not what she used to be”;
Portly Caesar yawns - “I know”;
He falls asleep on his throne,
They shuffle off through the snow:
Darkness and snow descend.

One of T. S. Eliot’s magi says:

A cold time we had of it,
Just the worst time of year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

We know that there is darkness not just in our own lives, but in the society in which we live.  We know that right now we live in the Divided States of America, as Time magazine recently put it.  No matter which “side” we’re on, the future somehow seems dark.  Pessimism, doubt, and fear prevail. Darkness and snow descend.  It is the very dead of winter.

It has probably always been so.  The “good old days” were probably not that good. Certainly darkness and gloom characterized the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.  It was in the darkness that the angels came to the shepherds as they watched over their flocks by night.  But St. John tells us that “The Light shined in the darkness, but the darkness did not overcome it.”

St. John did not say that, with the birth of Jesus, there would be no more darkness.  Darkness remains.  Things on earth will continue to go wrong.  Governments and individuals will continue to do terrible things.  Jesus was very straight with us: “In the world ye shall have tribulation.”

But this season of the Incarnation - which we celebrate with all the beauty we can muster at All Saints’ on Christmas, the Epiphany, and Candlemas - assures us that the Light shines in the darkness, and that the darkness can never overcome it. “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light,” a Light that shall prevail.

When the famous South African novelist Alan Paton was asked by The New York Times if he was optimistic about the future of South Africa, then under the cloud of apartheid, he replied, “No, I am not optimistic.  There is no evidence whatsoever for anyone to be optimistic about our future here.  But I am a Christian, and I therefore live in hope.”  In a way, Paton was giving us the Christian Faith in a nutshell.  We do dwell in darkness.  There is, in reality, little reason to be optimistic.  But as Christians we live in the confident hope that that Light has never been - and never will be -- extinguished.  

True faith begins with reality: darkness and trouble are real and they are all around us.  St. John advises us, then, to embrace the One who is the Light of the World: “To all who receive him, to all who accept him, he gave power to become children of God.”

Are we ready this year to receive the Light of the World?  Christina Rossetti was really writing about frozen human hearts, hearts closed to the Light, when she wrote:

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood heart as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Let us pray that our hearts will not be frozen this winter as we celebrate the great events of the Incarnation.  Let us pray that we - people who walk in darkness - will seek, see, and receive the greatest gift of all: the Light of the World, Jesus Christ.

Fr. Jarvis

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