O Radiant Dawn splendor of eternal light, sun of justice:
Come, shine on those who dwell in darkness
and the shadow of death.
How beautiful that Our Lord visited not a perfect world that didn’t need saving, but one broken and disfigured by original sin, so that He might restore it! He did not come to bring superficial warm feelings; He desires to enter into the deepest level of our brokenness and restore us to wholeness from the inside. But how often we forget or deny the reason and the need for His coming.
As Bishop Barron posed in his Catholicism series, why doesn’t peace come automatically with the birth of Christ? It is because peace must begin in each of our hearts, and we haven’t opened the windows of our hearts to let in the Dawn. Sometimes we have a wound or a grudge that gnaws at us, but we’d rather ignore it, deny it, and cover it with distractions so that we don’t have to face it. We close ourselves off and dwell in darkness. We think certain things are “too ugly” to be brought to the Light, forgetting that our dear Savior came specifically to shine in that ugliness, remove it, restore us to His grace, and guide us in the way of true peace. This is the beauty of the paradox: Our Lord is so powerful that by entering directly into our woundedness, He transforms those wounds into a place of intimacy with Him, so that what was once darkness now shines with His brightness.
Let the Light from on high break upon you this Christmas. Don’t be afraid to invite Him to enter into and heal the wounded areas of your heart—He desired to be born in a dark, dirty stable to prove that He will never shun your welcome, no matter how humble your dwelling may be.
~ Written by Miss Rachel