Ave Maria Meditations
During the two great holy nights of the church year, Christmas and Easter, the symbolism of light fuses with the symbolism of night. On both locations the church uses the interplay of night and light to show in a symbolic manner what the content of the feast in question is: the encounter of God and the world, the victorious entry of God into a world that refuses him room and yet in the end cannot prevent him from taking it.
This Christ-centered drama of light and darkness, God and the world, as they encounter each other, begins on Christmas when God knocks on the door of a world that rejects Him even though it belongs to Him. (Jn 1:5,11) But the world cannot prevent His coming. He Himself becomes “world” in becoming a human being. His coming seems a defeat of the light, which becomes darkness, but at the same time it is the first hidden victory of the light, since the world has not been able to prevent this coming, however carefully it may have barred the doors of its inns.
No, on Easter, the drama reaches its central act and climax. The darkness has used its ultimate weapon, death…but the Resurrection effects the great reversal. Light has won the victory and now lives on unconquerably…it has made a bit of the world its own and transformed it into itself.
Of course, this is not the end of the drama. The end is still awaited; it will arrive with the second coming of the Lord. At present, night continues, but it is a night in which a light has been lit. When the Lord comes again, the day will dawn and last forever.
Pope Benedict XVI from “Benedictus”
