Hail, Light

Look back a little, if you will, to the beginning, and consider God’s kindness. The first man played in Paradise, untied, because he was God’s child. But then he gave way to pleasure — the serpent is an allegory for pleasure, crawling on its belly, an earthly evil that turns toward matter — and he was led off by his cravings, and the child came of age in disobedience, and, having disobeyed his Father, he was ashamed before God. See what pleasure could do. The man who had been untied, because he was single-hearted, was found tied up in sins. The Lord wanted to untie him from those bonds again; and, tied into flesh himself — this is the divine mystery — he overpowered the serpent and made a slave of the tyrant, death. And, most astonishing of all, that man who had been led astray by pleasure and tied fast by decay — with hands spread wide the Lord showed him untied. O wonder of the mysteries! The Lord was laid low and man stood up; and the one who fell out of Paradise receives back a greater prize for obeying: the heavens. [a]

So, since the Word himself has come to us from heaven, it seems to me we have no business going after human teaching any longer — running to Athens and the rest of Greece, and to Ionia besides. For if our teacher is the one who filled all things with holy powers — in creating, in saving, in doing good, in giving law, in prophecy, in teaching — then the Teacher is now teaching everything, and the whole world has already become Athens and Greece through the Word. You believed a poets’ tale that set down Minos the Cretan as the close companion of Zeus; surely, then, you will not refuse to believe us, who have become God’s students and have taken up the wisdom that is really true — the wisdom the leading philosophers only hinted at in riddles, while the students of Christ have both grasped it and announced it aloud. And indeed, one might say, the whole … Christ is not divided up: there is no barbarian, no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, but a new man, remolded by God’s Holy Spirit.

After that, the other pieces of advice and instruction are paltry things about this or that particular: whether a man should marry, whether he should take part in public life, whether he should have children. But there is only one call that covers everything, that plainly runs the whole length of a life, at every moment and in every circumstance, and strains toward the one end that rules the rest, which is life — and that is reverence for God. It is the one thing we are bound to live by, if we are going to live forever. Philosophy, as the ancients say, is a long-drawn-out counsel, courting an everlasting love of wisdom; but “the Lord’s command shines far, giving light to the eyes.” Take back Christ, take back sight, take back your own light,

The Word who lit us up is “sweet, more than gold and precious stone; he is longed for more than honey and the honeycomb.” And how could he not be longed for, when he made a mind that had been buried in the dark clear and bright again, and sharpened the light-bearing eyes of the soul? For just as, “if the sun did not exist, then for all the other stars it would still be night everywhere,” so, if we had not come to know the Word and been lit up by him, we would be no different from birds fattened for the table: put on weight in the dark, fed for death. So let us make room for the light, that we may make room for God; let us make room for the light and become the Lord’s students.

This too he promised the Father: “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the middle of the church I will sing your praise.”

Sing, then, and tell me about your Father, God. What you tell will save; the song will teach me. How long I wandered, right up to now, looking for God! But since you are leading me into the light, Lord, Lord, and I find God through you and receive the Father from you, I become your fellow heir — since you were not ashamed of me, your brother.

So let us take it away, let us take away the forgetting of the truth. Let us pull down the ignorance and the darkness that stand in the way like a film over the eyes, and gaze on the God who really is, first raising this cry to him: “Hail, light!” On us, who were buried in darkness and shut up in the shadow of death, light has blazed out of heaven, purer than the sun, sweeter than life down here. That light is everlasting life, and whatever has a share in it lives. Night is afraid of the light; it goes down in terror and gives way to the day of the Lord. Everything has become light that never sleeps, and the setting has come round into the rising. This is what the new creation was after. For the Sun of Righteousness, who drives his chariot over all things, makes his round of the human race evenhandedly, imitating the Father, who “makes his sun rise on all people,” and sprinkles down the dew of the truth. He led the sunset over into sunrise; he crucified death into life; and having snatched man out of ruin he hung him up in the heights of heaven, transplanting what decays into what cannot decay, and changing earth into heaven — God’s own farmer,

and giving us as a free gift the Father’s inheritance — truly great, truly divine, and impossible to take away — making a human being god by heavenly teaching, “putting his laws into their mind and writing them on the heart.” What laws does he write? This is what God says: “They shall all know God, from the least to the greatest; and I will be merciful to them, and I will not remember their sins.” Let us take in the laws of life; let us be persuaded by God when he urges us; let us learn him, so that he may be merciful. And although he needs nothing, let us pay him a thankful wage — ready obedience — as a kind of rent to God for our lodging here.

that is, for your little bit of faith he gives you all this earth to farm, water to drink and more water to sail on, air to breathe, fire to work for you, a world to live in. From here he has let you send out a colony to heaven. These great works of his hands, so many of them, and these gifts, he has leased to you for a little faith.

And then — the people who have put their trust in sorcerers take the amulets and the spells they are given and treat them as though they saved. Will you not tie on the heavenly one himself, the Word who saves, as your amulet? Will you not trust God’s own incantation, and so be rid of the passions, which are the diseases of the soul, and be torn free of sin? For sin is everlasting death. You are utterly toothless and blind, like moles. You do nothing but eat, you pass your lives in the dark, and you crumble away in decay. But truth is there — it is there — and it cries out, “Light will shine out of darkness.” So let the light shine in the hidden part of a person, in the heart, and let the rays of knowledge rise, bringing to view and making bright the man hidden inside: the disciple of the light, the close friend and fellow heir of Christ. This happens above all when the most honored and most reverend name of the good Father comes to be known by a reverent and good child — a Father who gives gentle orders and commands his child what will save him. Whoever obeys him has the advantage every way: he follows God, he obeys the Father, he came to know him after wandering, he loved God, he loved his neighbor, he fulfilled the command, he goes after the prize, he claims the promise.

God has always had it before him to save the human flock. That is why the good God sent the good Shepherd. And the Word, spreading the truth open, showed people the height of salvation, so that either they would change their hearts and be saved, or refuse to listen and be judged. This is what righteousness proclaims: to those who listen, good news; to those who will not listen, a courtroom. The trumpet that raises a great din sounds and gathers soldiers and announces war; so will Christ, breathing out a tune of peace to the ends of the earth, not gather his own soldiers, the soldiers of peace? He has gathered them, my friend — an army that sheds no blood — by blood and by word, and he has put the kingdom of heaven into their hands. Christ’s trumpet is his good news. He blew it, and we heard. “Let us arm ourselves for peace, putting on the breastplate of righteousness, taking up the shield of faith, setting the helmet of salvation on our heads” — and let us sharpen “the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word.” That is how the apostle draws us up in line, for peace. These are our weapons, and nothing can wound them. Armed with these, let us take our stand against the evil one. Let us put out the evil one’s fire-hardened arrows with points of water, dipped by the Word, paying back his kindnesses with thankful blessings and honoring God with the divine Word. For while you are still speaking, it says, he will answer: “Here I am.”

What a holy and blessed power this is, by which God shares a city with human beings! So it is better and finer to become at once the imitator and the servant of the best being there is. For no one will be able to imitate God except in the ways he serves him in holiness, and no one can serve and worship him except by imitating him. This is how the heavenly and truly divine love comes to people: when, somewhere in the soul itself, what is truly beautiful is fanned back into flame by the divine Word and is able to blaze out. And here is the greatest thing of all: the moment a man genuinely wants it, being saved runs alongside him, choice and life yoked together, so to speak. That is why this exhortation of the truth, and it alone, is like the most faithful of friends: it stays beside us to our last breath, and to the whole and finished spirit of the soul it makes a good escort for those setting out for heaven.

What is it, then, that I am urging on you? I am in a hurry for you to be saved. This is what Christ wants. In one word, he gives you life for nothing. And who is he? Learn it briefly. The Word of truth; the Word of a life that cannot decay; the one who gives a man new birth by carrying him back up into the truth; the goad that drives toward salvation; the one who drives out decay and chases death away; the one who has built a temple among human beings so that he may install God among human beings. Purify the temple. Leave your pleasures and your idle amusements to the wind and the fire, like a flower that lasts a day. Farm the fruits of self-mastery with good sense, and set yourself up for God as the first of the spoils, so that you may be not only God’s work but also God’s grace. Both suit the close friend of Christ: to prove worthy of the kingdom, and to be counted worthy of the kingdom.