Our modern way of life, the pace of our contemporary world, has done much to obscure the ancient way of Christ.

That is, it has done much to obscure the ancient way of Christians, that way of life paced and regulated by those more natural things like the rising and setting of the sun, the course of the moon, the seasons of the earth, and the tolling of bells. Today, you see, that we are children of central heating and air conditioning, children of electric light, gathering the food we eat mostly by ordering it off our phones, we have—we can’t help it—grown less sensitive to the reality of nature, less sensitive to the pulse of nature.

Now, I certainly don’t despair of the benefits of the modern world; I’m not suggesting we Catholics should become Amish—although I think those Amish are onto something. I’m just pointing out one of the deeper reasons we may have difficulty grasping the reality and pulse, and sometimes even the teaching, of the Church today. And that’s because so much of the Church’s worship and teaching presumes that we are people who understand nature, but we no longer do.

For millennia, for example, when the sun set, humans would slow down, light their fires and draw close to one another; and that was good for the earth and good for human culture, as we told our stories and sang our songs around the hearth. These days, however, at best, the sunset’s a pretty thing, but nothing that needs to slow us down at all; there is no longer any good reason to stay home now that the whole world is filled with billions of light-emitting diodes. We just don’t need to pay much attention to the rising and setting sun anymore; the darkness of night doesn’t anymore mean what it used to mean.

Now, again, that just is the way it is, and there’s no going back. And who would want to? It’s just I’m trying to uncover the reason why today’s feast of Candlemas—this feast celebrating the light of Christ, which was for our ancestors as profound and moving and comforting as any other feast in the Church’s year—why it is for us today almost completely neglected, almost entirely forgotten.

Born of the prophetic words of Simeon, in Luke, that this child Jesus, which he held in his arms, is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles,” this feast of Candlemas—marked by the blessing of what used to be those precious things, the candles of church and home—celebrated the dawning of a light in darkness that the darkness could not comprehend or conquer.[1] And the thing is, I think simply that deep within the darkness of winter, before electric light, eyes strained by the grey and darkness of the season, to come to church to hear that Christ is the light, that his light will at Easter bring an end to the world of darkness like the warmth and brightness of spring, that it’s a light that can shine in my own dark heart; to see the candles of the church blessed and set aflame, to have my own family’s candles blessed, to make the light of my family and my home share in the light that is Christ: I don’t know, I think I get why our ancestors better understood this feast. Because they were not just more primitive, they were more natural; and I just think that made them people better able to listen to a God who seems to insist upon speaking to his creatures simply, in the simplest signs; speaking through natural things like light and darkness, water and bread and wine.

But what does that mean for today’s Christian? Funny thing, supposedly, about the invention of LED lights is that although they are indeed more efficient and better for the environment, we’ve not really done anything better for the environment at all; light pollution, in fact, has only increased, and that’s because we’re putting lights on everything now; now, we’re buying millions more light bulbs than we used to in the past. The earth is now more unnaturally bright than ever before.[2] But what does that have to do with anything?

Here’s the point I’m trying to make. If you want to find the light of Christ today, that may indeed be more difficult than it used to be. Not because such light is not real (it is real), but because we have surrounded ourselves with so much artificial light that it’s hard to see spiritual light. And so, desensitized, some have lost the light of faith while others may simply be wondering why it is the things of God, things like the Church, don’t shimmer quite like the things of this world. It’s not God’s fault, it’s ours. It’s not God’s absence, it’s the unnatural weariness of our eyes, the processed and technological artificiality that has spiritually dulled our minds and hearts.

And so, what should we do? I don’t know, but maybe it’s not some app that’s going to save you. Maybe it’s not the next thing for sale that’s going to help you get your spiritual life back on track. I don’t know, Lent is still a few weeks off, but maybe there’s something there, something wise in those silly old rules about fasting and praying and almsgiving; maybe do Lent naturally this year; you don’t need an app for that at all. Maybe just lean into the silence; sit in the dark and pray—“shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret,” Jesus said, didn’t he?[3] Maybe do something like that. Again, I don’t know; I’m searching and scratching just like you. I just sense that if we’re ever going to find this light of God again, we may need to let things go dark again, silent again, simpler again at least. Amen.

[1] Luke 2:32; John 1:5

[2] J. B. MacKinnon, The Day the World Stops Shopping, 76, 148

[3] Matthew 6:6

© 2025 Rev. Joshua J. Whitfield