DAILY DEVOTIONAL

Thursday, June 7, 2018

I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in Me should remain in darkness. As for anyone who hears My words and does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I have not come to judge the world, but to save the world. There is a judge for the one who rejects Me and does not receive My words: The word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day.… – John 12:46-48

More and more I understand the subtle forms of darkness.  Darkness can be thought of as the darkness of the heart.  Darkness can be thought of as the shadowy realm, even the shadowed places within one’s soul.  But of late, I contemplate the darkness as the veiled curtains that blur our vision of reality. Sometimes the veils of darkness are barely there, ever so slightly weakening our vision; sometimes the veils of darkness are quite opaque, blinding us to the reality all the while thinking we see clearly.

We gather the veils of darkness through the years, usually in ways which we fail to even notice.  Veils of past experiences, veils of inherited prejudices, veils of ideology, veils of fears,  veils of wars, veils of values slightly out of synch with the values of the Lord, veils of selective virtue, veils of self-doubt, veils of conjured personas, veils of arrogance, veils of self-righteousness, veils of tainted faith understandings.  And usually the veils slowly gather, layer upon layer, in ways that go unnoticed, in ways we assume must be … and slowly we see the world and ourselves, even the Lord, through the shadows of which we have grown accustomed.

But not all is lost, we are not forever imprisoned in a world of shadowy veils, for Christ came as light.  Christ came to throw open the curtains rending them in two, then over time, helping us to cast them aside … so that we no longer live in a world of condemnation but in a world of vivid clarity.

Always in Christ’s Service,

Fr. Charitas de la Cruz