Christ be our Light!

I always appreciate the Holy Rosary and the many fruits I find come from such this particular prayer to our Blessed Mother. This morning’s prayers were particular enlightening and fulfilling, and so, I thought, why not share the fruits of my prayer with my fellow blog-o-philes.

The Luminous Mysteries are by far my favorite series of mysteries to pray. Today, I began my meditation of the First Mystery, the Baptism of our Lord, by thinking about the particular water that touched our Lord. Usually anything water comes into contact with will adulterate the water—water brings a certain amount of purity to a blemish and losses its own purity in order to purify the blemished (i.e. clean water touches a dirty dish, washes and cleans the dish, but at the expense of becoming dirty water). Yet, perhaps for the first time in the history of water, on the day of our Lord’s baptism, it touched something even more pure than itself—the head and body of Jesus Christ!

Imagine the very water that did this! It is so invigorating to think of the individual drops which rolled off the sinless body of Christ, as if they met a frictionless surface that propelled them and speed them toward a greater purity to fall back into a muddy Jordan only to continue to purify the water’s captive filth. The water cycle teaches us that water is preserved over time, albeit in ever morphing form, but the muddy water of the Jordan before Christ stepped into it likely contained a molecule (at least) of water that was or touched another molecule of water that played such miraculous and crucial roles throughout salvation history—the water that drowned the sinful world and set Noah’s ark afloat; the water that destroyed Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea, &c.

Water has a particular symbolism in Judaism—the seas being a tumult of chaos to be feared and avoided, and why not if for all of salvation history water consumes the sin of man?! Each once-pure molecule drowns sin somehow and rightfully the sea is viewed as a churning cesspool, a deep abyss of darkness. Until, of course, the purity of Christ’s own Being touches the water that touches Him. If water could think, how perplexed it would be! To touch something pure for once!

It is this water’s encounter with Christ that got my prayer-wheels turning—where deep cries out to deep—the abyss of darkness that is the raging waters is met by the Abyss of Mercy and Love—the Light of the world. This took me back to the very beginning, when the earth was “a formless void, there was darkness over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the waters.” But, in Christ’s Baptism, God’s Spirit is not only hovering over the water, but actually in the water! And in the beginning, the empty, dark, formless deep is given definition and shape when God says, “Let there be light.” Christ is the light of the world, the Light that, again, redefines the water—purifying a sinful substance, essentially changing a substance’s essence from what it was to something new.

And isn’t this the real lesson of the Luminous Mysteries?! How Christ as the Light of the World transforms, transubstantiates?! The first three mysteries (His Baptism, the Wedding Feast at Cana, and the Proclamation of the Kingdom) show what a living encounter with Christ can do to the physical world. He can transform it! How does he transform it? By being the light that the fourth mystery (His Transfiguration) so clearly illustrates that He is—He is the shining, radiant beacon of Light—the Word of God, which is God’s first words in the Bible—“Let there be light.” God utters this phrase first to give shape, to disclose reality, to make His Creation of Heaven and Earth known—things are changed by moving from formless voids, dark and deep, because they encounter the Light.

Indeed, each of the first four mysteries leads to the ultimate illustration of Christ’s transformative power in the Institution of the Holy Eucharist where he transubstantiates bread and wine into His Body and Blood. And why does he do this?! To rival Houdini?! Because He was bored at the table and had ill manners, and so thought He would play with His food?! No! Certainly not. The fourth mystery shows what Christ is: the Light. The first three show what an encounter with Christ can do, as does the fifth (He can change things). But the fifth points to a personal economy with God. The first three mysteries are historical facts showing a pattern. The fifth mystery is an invitation to have faith in Christ’s historic track record of transforming things. In this final mystery Christ changes common things into Himself so that we (common things) can have a historic encounter with Him repeatedly, over time, and so be ever-conformed to Him, changed into Him.

The Light of the World that in the very beginning is called upon by God to cement Creation by giving it definition, shape, form, and illumination is allowed to shine on us, nay, shine in us through the Eucharist! He can save us beyond some shallow gilding or mere pity—He can save us, nay, He does save us by transforming us through His very Self. Just as in the First Mystery He changes the water molecules from mere sin-soaking sponges to sin-eradicating enzymes by immersing Himself into them and confounding the very substance, so too, he does with us! He immerses Himself in us through the fruits of the Fifth Mystery and confounds us by His Mercy and His Love, seizing our hearts and souls as He calls us to Himself. Deep, again, cries out to deep— our abyss of sinfulness longs for so great a Redeemer who has come to not simply forgive the unworthy, but somehow make us worthy by His very Self. We are changed from sin-stricken, Fallen humanity to glorified Divinity. Our darkened, hardened hearts are set afire by an encounter with Christ, with the Light of the World.

Christ be our Light!