April 20, 2019
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
Fort Worth, Texas
Genesis 1:1-2:2
Psalm 104:1-2, 5-6, 10, 12, 13-14, 24, 35
Exodus 14:15-15:1
Exodus 15:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 17-18
Ezekiel 36:16-17a, 18-28
Psalm 42:3, 5, 43:3, 4
Romans 6:3-11
Luke 24:1-12
As a priest engaged in graduate studies in the area of health care ethics, I was involved as a part of several interdisciplinary teams concerned with the treatment and care of newborn babies. One such study involved the research of treatment for newborn infants affected by jaundice. My contribution was in the area of ethics, but the other members of the team included students in medicine, epidemiology, nursing, obstetrics, and neonatology. The focus of the study was to determine if it would be better medicine and more cost effective to discharge infants and their mothers from the hospital after a short period of time, with the chance that the newborn would develop jaundice during the first few days of life and have to be readmitted to the hospital soon thereafter, or would it be better not to discharge so immediately after birth, so that if jaundice developed it could be treated immediately. I learned very much as being a member of that team.
One of the things that I learned was that at that time, jaundice could be treated in newborn infants by exposure of the skin to sunlight—preferably, as the best disinfectant—or jaundice could also be treated by a special light treatment known as phototherapy which involves using a lamp that shines on as much of the skin of the newborn baby as possible to rid the child’s body of excess bilirubin that otherwise could poison the child. The eyes of the child are covered over during the treatment for their protection from harm that could come from too much exposure to the intense light. The healing by the light of one aspect of the child’s health is balanced against potential harm that could be done to another aspect of the child’s health. Such is the human condition wounded by the effects of original sin.
The created light we read of in tonight’s reading from the Book of Genesis is good because God created it and separated it from the darkness. The subsequent lights that He creates separate the day from the night in governance and right order for the beauty and wisdom of His creation. Then, sin enters the world through human disobedience. Human beings, through an abuse of free will, attempt to blend light and darkness, believing the lie of the serpent that seduces them with the falsehood that to be like God means to exert power and dominance arbitrarily over creation—that light and darkness are relatively the same thing. The effect of this Original Sin is that the light then casts shadows—the light becomes obscured in human eyes through the darkening of the human intellect but the light itself does not change. We cannot look directly into natural light because you cannot see anything when you do. Our eyes are blinded by such light. Our eyes are hurt by such light.
After the Fall of our first parents, light casts shadows; shadows that we can, without Grace, confuse for the whole of reality. However, we the Baptized washed clean of sin and its resulting chaos can look directly into the Light of the World—because the Light of the World has first looked at us with pure and unrefracted love setting us “apart from worldly vices and from the gloom of sin, and leading us to grace.” The Light of the World has paid our debt with His Justice and has freed us in His Mercy. He has “poured out his own dear Blood and has wiped clean the record of our ancient sinfulness.” The Light of the World reveals to us all of reality in the full Truth of Redemption. The Light of the World lovingly purifies us from the jaundice of sin. The Light of the World saves us from eternal death because the Light of the World is Jesus Christ risen from the dead.
When Jesus told His disciples to roll away the boulder from the entrance of Lazarus' tomb, they did as He directed, and the natural light entered the tomb and cast shadows into it by shining from the outside in. There is nothing darker than a tomb. Lazarus came out of that tomb still bound by the wrappings of death—his hands tied, his head covered, his body shrouded.
When the women went to the Tomb of Jesus it was empty and two men appeared within the tomb in dazzlingly bright, as bright as day, garments, because the two men carried the message full of gladness from the Light of the World — that He has “broken the prison-bars of death and risen victoriously from the underworld.” The Light of the World that now shone out from the empty tomb—enlightening the darkness of the world which previously in the fallen darkness of sin was taken to be light. Jesus Christ, Risen from the Dead, is the Light of World who casts no shadows. Jesus Christ, Risen from the Dead, disperses all darkness—sickness, ignorance, error, death, and most especially the jaundice of sin.
We began our Vigil in the darkness of the night. The Light of the World has burst forth and this night is bright as day even as it is night because as the Psalmist writes in Psalm 139, “If I say, ‘surely darkness will hide me, and night shall be my light’—darkness is not dark for You and night shines as the day.” This night is now brightened by ‘the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ the Light of the World, who, coming back from death's domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever.’”
