Wednesday of the Fourth Week of Easter
Acts 12:24—13:5  +  John 12:44-50
May 10, 2017

“‘I came into the world as light….’”

When we recite the Creed on Sundays and solemnities, in its second part (the part in which we profess our faith in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity) we profess that God the Son is “eternally begotten of the Father.”  This statement is a profession of the divinity of Jesus Christ, a statement made against the heresy of the Egyptian priest Arius, who taught that “there was a time when the Son was not.”

Focus on the truth that the Father and the Son are one.  Consider it in light of the phrase that the Son is “Light from Light” .  How is God light?  This is a metaphor, of course, but a very pregnant one.  Jesus proclaims in today’s Gospel passage, “I came into the world as light….”  He is not talking, of course, about being a beam of physical light, but rather that His mission in this world has the same effect as light.

Jesus’ earthly mission is continued through time by His Mystical Body, the Church.  Your vocation within the Church bears—in some way—a share in the meaning of this metaphor:  “that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness.”  We might reflect on today’s Gospel in conjunction with Jesus’ words during the Sermon on the Mount:  “You are the light of the world.”  How in your vocation are you meant to bear to others the same light that Christ sheds on the meaning of your life?