Bright Darkness

"The People who walked in darkness have seen a great Light." --Isaiah 9:2
Orthodox Church Easter Vigil, Toronto, Canada

Several Staff Members gather with me each week to discuss the Scripture Readings and other aspects of the Sunday Liturgy. This upcoming Sunday has the passage from the prophet Isaiah which proclaims: "The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." The Sunday Gospel from Matthew quotes Isaiah in regard to Jesus as this Light. (Isaiah 9:2 & Matthew 4:12-16)

 

I noted that last Sunday, Isaiah was also read and light was mentioned: "I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6b) Also, I noted that next Sunday we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord where Simeon says of the Child Jesus: "for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel." (Luke 2;30-32) And, interestingly, the Sunday following (on February 9) also mentions light again.

 

My group had an interesting discussion about the images of darkness and light in the Readings for this Sunday. We tend to think of darkness as negative, a symbol of evil, ignorance, and sin; light is positive, a symbol of good, enlightenment and knowledge, and being Godlike.

 

But God created the day and the night. Is darkness always negative? Biologically, most humans need darkness in order to sleep and rest. We would not see the stars except at night (and the darker the place one is, the more amazingly lighted up is the night sky by the stars). Our first nine months of life is in a dark, but comforting place: the womb!

 

Several of my group said that they don’t like when night is falling. I, however, like dusk. When the colors soften and the light begins to dim, it has some kind of comforting effect upon me. I like very much the Evening Hymn "Day is Done":

 

"Day is done, but love unfailing

dwells ever here.                   

Shadows fall, but hope, prevailing,

calms every fear.

Loving Father, none forsaking,

take our hearts of Love's own making

Watch our sleeping, guard our waking,

be always near."

 

(Listen to the Hymn HERE )

 

 

As I later privately reflected upon the darkness and light symbolism, which I am sharing about now, I remembered an interesting thing I read many years ago and had to research again to refresh my memories: it is the concept of "bright darkness" in Christian mysticism.

 

 

I had been reading the fascinating account written by a 12 century Benedictine monk, Abbot Suger, who renovated the French Royal Chapel of St. Denis in Paris and is credited with beginning the Gothic style of churches in the Middle Ages. Suger is also credited with using more stained glass in a church building than previously, especially cobalt blue. This wasn’t just because of aesthetic reasons; and curiously, blue had very little religious symbolism before Abbot Suger. However, light shining through the dark blue was a perfect physical manifestation of the mystical theology of a Christian write now called Pseudo-Dionysius: It created a vision of "bright darkness."   For example, Pseudo-Dionysius wrote "Let us enter into the divine darkness – the light so bright it cannot be seen – and lose ourselves in the presence of God "

 

Tim Blanning in a Book Review published in the Times Literary Supplement (21 September 2011) notes:

 

"Christian disapproval of the night is as old as the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, St Paul’s epistles equate darkness with evil, as does John’s Gospel – ‘I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness’. However, there was another albeit less obtrusive theological tradition advocating a path leading to God that was not brilliantly lit. Especially influential was Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, the fifth-century Syrian thinker, who proclaimed: ‘I pray we could come to this darkness so far above light!’. Those words are taken from his treatise The Mystical Theology and in the early modern period, too, it was the mystics who valued darkness. To the fore were two sixteenth-century saints – Teresa of Avila (1515–82) and John of the Cross (1542–91). In his poem ‘Dark Night’, John praised his subject in language eerily anticipating the second act of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde: ‘Oh, night that guided me, Oh, night more lovely than the dawn, Oh, night that joined Beloved with lover, Lover transformed in the Beloved!’."

 

This "bright darkness" in Christian mysticism cautions against trying to explain everything in the "light" of rational thought only. The period of history we tellingly call the "Enlightenment" (17^th & 18^th centuries) tried to do just that, and God and religion hardly had anything praiseworthy in the "light" of such rationalism. The Middle Ages got called the "Dark Ages." Reason was deified by the French Revolution. The Catholic Church was particularly seen as "benighted."

 

But God cannot be limited by our limited human understanding, as wonderful as reason can be. There must be room for mystery and the paradoxes of "bright darkness" and knowing God also through unknowing (sic). The early Church called baptism "enlightenment" and also as "initiation into the mysteries." Sometimes night and darkness are indeed at the service of God. Witness the Exultet, sung at the Easter Vigil, when the Church is in darkness and the Paschal Candle is brought in and our congregational candles are lighted; then is sung in part: "This is the night of which it is written: The night shall be as bright as day, dazzling is the night for me, and full of gladness!"

 

 

A Church in Pittsburgh

 

 

This photo from a church in Pittsburgh captues what the Gothic Church renovatators like Abbot Suger were trying to capture: a certain darkness illuminated at the same time. Most Gothic Cathedrals are dark, or would be so now without modern lighting, and yet there was a soft glow of light from the stained glass. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is a photo of the night sky illuminated with stars. It, too, is a "bright darkness." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abbot Suger's Church of St. Denis, though much has been added since the 12 century. The bootom rows of windows behind the altar was considered revolutionary in his day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One of Abbot Suger's original windows. Note the cobalt blue, considered a dark color in his time. Many of the stained glass windows at St. Denis were destroyed in the "Enlightment" French Revolution. The windows were later replaced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Let us enter into the divine darkness – the light so bright it cannot be seen – and lose ourselves in the presence of God "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Church Art: Symbols of the Four Evangelists

So many of my reflections for this Blog have so far detailed the Catholic or sacramental imagination. This refers to how Catholics see (or image) reality: both about God and the world. Obviously this is one of my "passions."

As I wrote about the Catholic Spiritual Journey:

"Those who were raised Catholic do not always understand how this 'Catholic way' of seeing things differs in certain ways from how Protestants see things. Why, for example, do Catholic churches typically have statues and candles and crucifixes and holy water and incense and in general use a lot of 'stuff' in worship and a Baptist church has none of these things? Proponents would say it’s a different way of approaching God; the Catholic way is more symbol and creation friendly and the Protestant way is more symbol and creation cautious."

[More on the Catholic or sacramental approach HERE]

This week, as part of the Church Beautification Project, we are hanging the tapestries of the Symbols of the Four Evangelists in our church. The parish has had these tapestries for many years, but I wanted them to be displayed for maxim effect and now we are able to do so.

The origin of these symbols is from an interpretation of the early Church concerning the mention of the Four Beasts in the Prophet Ezekiel 1:4-10 [Read it HERE] and in the Book of Revelation 4:6-8 [Read it HERE]. The original authors of these two Bible books were not thinking of the Four Gospels, i.e. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, but each beast or figure got associated later with the Four Gospels and their authors (or Evangelists).

Here are the explanations for each symbol as interpreted in the early Church:

"St. Matthew: Winged Man, [which also symbolizes The Incarnation].—To St. Matthew was given the creature in human likeness, because he commences his gospel with the human generation of Christ, and because in his writings the human nature of Our Lord is more dwelt upon than the divine.

"St. Mark: Winged Lion, [which also symbolizes The Resurrection].—The Lion was the symbol of St. Mark, who opens his gospel with the mission of John the Baptist, ‘the voice of one crying in the wilderness.’ [lions lived in the wilderness]. He also sets forth the royal dignity of Christ [compare: the lion is king of the beasts] and dwells upon His power manifested in the resurrection from the dead. The lion was accepted in early times as a symbol of the resurrection because the young lion was believed always to be born dead, but was awakened to vitality by the breath, the tongue, and roaring of its sire. 

"St. Luke: Winged Ox, [which also symbolizes The Passion].—The form of the ox, the beast of sacrifice, fitly sets forth the sacred office [of Christ the High Priest], and also the atonement for sin by blood, on which, in [Luke’s] gospel,[Luke] particularly dwells.

 "St. John: The Eagle, [which also symbolizes Ascension].—The eagle was allotted to St. John because, as the eagle soars towards heaven, [John] soared in spirit upwards to the heaven of heavens to bring back to earth revelation of sublime and awful [i.e., awesome] mysteries."

　

From Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, by John Vinycomb, [1909]

　

　The Four Evangelists Tapestries: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John

　

　

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Looking Upwards

I mentioned last week my enthusiastic interest in architecture, especially church architecture (I guess there’s no surprise about that!). The architecture of our own church at Holy Faith is quite distinctive. It’s construction was completed in 1982. It received awards at the time for its design. I entered seminary in that same year. Since I had gone to school at UF and was working in Gainesville at the time, I remember visiting Holy Faith to see this new building.

As I strain my memory, I cannot remember a great deal of what I thought of the new Holy Faith Church except I was impressed. I most remember the ceiling. I remember admiring the lofty wood ceiling at that time and still I think its one of the most striking features of our church. I have heard the same admiring comment again and again from others. We sometimes forget about the ceiling, it is so familiar, but I recently came across this photo of our church on the Internet that shows the ceiling’s beauty.

A very interesting thing about our interior ceiling is that it forms the shape of a Maltese Cross. You can also see that shape from aerial photos. When it was first pointed out to me this feature of the Maltese Cross, I immediately thought of the Knights Templar, a fascinating subject on its own. I later asked our founding Pastor, Fr. Flannan Walsh, if the architect liked the Templars. He said he actually did.

The Maltese Cross, however, was not the original Cross of the Templars at all. It is actually the cross of the 11century Order of St John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and Malta, otherwise known as the Order of Malta. One would expect the Cross of Malta to be Maltese. (Read about the symbolism of the Maltese Cross here)

The Order of Malta’s mission is to help the poor, which is a wonderful link with our particular parish mission "to build a community of compassion in Christ."

Back to our ceiling, one of the enduring architectural features of many churches is a lofty ceiling. The high ceilings of Gothic cathedrals, for example, lift up one’s sight (and mind) to the transcendence of God and our smallness before God. And yet, we humans built such lofty and awesome buildings like those cathedrals, so it is also a tribute to human art and the ability to create high beauty in imitation of God’s creation. (See some examples set to beautiful music here)

I often imagine the presence of the angels and saints at our worship. This is what our Catholic Faith tells us is actually the case when we celebrate the Mass. We are participating also in the Heavenly Liturgy, i.e., all the angels and saints, the blessed deceased and with the Virgin Mother of God in their worship of the Triune God in heaven. (See Catechism#1090)

I sometimes playfully say, our churches must have high ceilings to make room for all these heavenly hosts with whom we worship!

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