The light of a child brings hope and healing
- Fr Jason Murphy -
For the house proud amongst us, the light of the winter sun can sometimes undo all the good work we have done, polishing and cleaning, in preparation for the homecoming of family and visitors gathering for the Christmas period. We could spend our days polishing and hoovering the good furniture and carpet of the front room in readiness for putting up the Christmas tree and decorations, only to be frustrated by the rays of the morning sun penetrating through an east facing window illumining darkened corners of the room with the most glorious of light. For as the rays of the sun reach the mahogany table top, there you can see speckles of dust alighting on the surface like damselflies dancing on the meniscus of a pond, while other particles float in the light of the sun’s rays entering the room, particles not visible but for the light that illumines them.
In Advent we await the Light, the light of mid-winter, the darkest time of the year, a Light which illumines the darkness, not a light of electric power or an LED but a true Light, which lights up the hidden corners of the heart like that of the mid-winter sun penetrating where we have not dusted for the visiting eye.
This light is the light of God made man, the most vulnerable and yet the most endurable light of all, the light of a little child, which brings Hope and Healing, born in the lowliest of circumstances to the lowliest of couples, to be first visited by the lowliest of men. This was not by accident but by God’s design so that, like the Light of the mid-winter sun, this child could enter into human hearts in the corners where only a child can enter in and so bring Love, which in itself brings healing to places not touched by human hands.
We all are in the need of healing, no matter how much we try to cover up the sores in the busyness of our everyday lives. We all carry hurts done to us, which leave scars and pain and hurts that we have caused unto others, which chip away at the person God intended us to be.
Only the other day I received a telephone call from a man I came to know in a parish over 20 years ago but have not met for many years. He is a good man, an ordinary man who worked hard all his days. He said: “I just rang you out of the blue as I came in for confessions to the town but there happens to be no confessions on and I thought I’d just ring you to ask if I could pick your brains. It’s just that there’s something playing on my mind; I owed a man some money, perhaps some fifty years ago, I’m not sure I ever got an invoice, but anyway I don’t think I ever paid him and the thing is, I think the man is dead and it’s now bearing on my mind and I’m asking what you think I should do.”
Without much talking I knew this good man had the answer and just needed someone to listen to his burden. He resolved to make a contribution to a charity.
In the light of the mid-winter’s sun the dust particles are illumined as they float in the air so too in the Light of Christ, those fragments of hurts inflicted by others and unto others are made so real and very clear.
In this time of Advent as we approach the days of the coming Light, let us look deep within, deep into the hidden corners of the heart and let us shine a light on the particles that float in mid-air.
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