O Oriens,
splendor lucis aeternae,
et sol justitiae:
veni, et illumina
sedentes in tenebris,
et umbra mortis.
O Dawn,
splendor of eternal light,
and sun of justice,
come, and shine
on those seated in darkness,
and in the shadow of death.
Christ is born to us. Glorify him.
In winter, here in Chicago, I have the pleasure of greeting the dawn by prayer. As it so happens, our fireplace, and the mantel on which is our prayer "corner," faces directly east. There are two small stained glass windows on either side of the fireplace, with sashes just about eye level. (The windows sit high up the wall.) When I pray, I turn on a small low-wattage lamp, and light the vigil candle. The rest of the house is dark and silent. I pray in a hushed voice, or whisper, and face the icons. About halfway into my prayer, the windows begin to take on greyish color, and out the north window I can see the sky start to turn pink and orange.
If you stand and watch for it, dawn comes unnoticeably. There is rarely a point at which you can say, "Here it was not day. Now it is day." Dawn only becomes noticeable once it has already crept up on you. You can say, "Ten minutes ago I did not notice it was becoming day. Now I see that it is." The temptation, of course, is to make dawn come early. To stumble into the front room with the icons and the prayerbooks, turning on each light in the room as you make your way to the front of the house--to stand in brilliant, but imitation, light is, or at least it is to me, very unsatisfactory. Even on the coldest days (and the front room, being the north room, is the coldest in the house), there is something warm about the gradual dawn. Warm, and hopeful.
It is said that when Christ comes again, he will appear in the east. I take it that such a premise comes from the Olivet Discourse, where Jesus says, "For as the lightning comes from the east and shines as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man" (Matthew 24:27 ESV). But it makes perfect sense to me. If the inauguration of the Kingdom of God is made on the eighth day, the day of eternity, then the final consummation of that inauguration should happen from the eastern sky, whence all our earthly days begin.
It is a day which will bring release, full freedom from bondage, and the fulfillment of all justice. That day has already begun to break. Already the sky brings forth grey tones, and promises of final fulfillment. But the full day has not yet dawned. Evil, bondage, suffering must yet remain with us, must yet be an integral part of Christian striving and holiness. We remain always barely satisfied, we remain hungry yet, as with all creation we groan awaiting his coming. The more we console ourselves with this-worldly happiness, the less vigilant we will be of his coming. The more effort we expend in making his eternal reign an earthly kingdom, the less peace and justice we will see in our lifetimes. Ours is to awaken the sleepers, and to keep our lamps trimmed. We have here no earthly hope. Here all we have is the bondage of illness and suffering, of injustice and evil, of the chaos of the passions which infect all we are and do. We cannot free ourselves. We can but wait, and pray and strive and hope.
Come, O eastern Dawn. Shine on us, and make us whole.
Christ is born to us. Glorify him.
Posted by Clifton at December 5, 2004 06:30 AM | TrackBack