John 8:12

The Second Verse 

Aspects of Light

• The Divine Mercy image speaks to one aspect, but it seems there are many culminating in John 10:10

  • Spiritual/Moral Light

    • Healing our corruption and revealing our capacity for change/conversion

      • Isaiah 2:5

      • 1 Peter 2:9

    • Guidance through our spiritual nature and God’s will to which sin leaves us blind (see any healing of the blind and especially; John 9:35-41)

      • Exodus 13:21

      • Psalm 119:105

    • New insight unto our relationship with the Father we were always to scared to realize (CCC 258)

    • Revelation of our truest purpose which is love, and its moral expression (CCC 1694)

    • Practical understanding to help us receive His guidance (See Discerning the Will of God by Tim Gallagher)

    • The Power of Grace to help us know Him and love well (CCC 1996-2005)

    • Made to be like God Genesis 1:26 and CCC 460

    • Beatitudes Matthew 5:1-12 and CCC 1716-1724

    • This aspect may remind you of the Easter Vigil

  • Psychological Light

    • With the peace brought by the Spirit (precipitated of the spiritual alignment/encounter with Christ), our human priorities/efforts become well ordered (CCC 260, 558, 624, 736)

    • Anxieties removed by trust in God (CCC 154)

    • The accomplishment of what we desire most, what we were made for (CCC 2548)

    • Reintegration of our natures and redirection of our desires/appetites (CCC 2548)

      • Mercy healing our regrets and suffering being properly ordered to our greatest good (being chosen and affirmed)

      • Feeling known and loved (known and loved)

      • Encountering Him with our senses sacramentally (touched)

      • God uses beauty and courtship to draw us to Himself, to love of Him who first loved us

      • Depend on His Providence (to be safe)

      • Being a part of His Church and His Family adopted in the depths of our poverty and depravity (to be blessed and included, to belong)

  • Philosophical Light - CCC 2465-2470

    • There is no better grounding for epistemology, metaphysics, and meaning than in Truth Himself

    • Being able to read and intuit the most meaningful perspective has always been helpful especially where morality is concerned John 3:19-21

    • Nowhere else are we given such clarity in discernment, understanding ourselves or others

    • No one is more capable of bestowing on the Christian the satisfying clarity of mysteries or withhold it as the Creator Himself

    • No follower of Christ who humbly seeks the truth and asks God for assistance will be left in the dark especially where most needed

    • Knowledge of ultimate truths are only a practical necessity after we listen and hear Jesus

      • Knowledge increases love by way of its beauty

  • Physical Light

    • The Spiritual extends through the Psychological and the Physiological 

    • Having the rest of our being aligned to God so also is our tangible actions, the words we say, the thoughts we have, and above all the person we become

    • Christ takes on our humanity not only to free and redeem it, but to encounter us

    • As a result of our concupiscence, we are often subject to our misinformed physiology and biology

    • Having transformed the rest of our being, that which enters our senses is no longer foreign and oppressive and can be made into a perpetual encounter with God.

    • At the consummation of the ages Christ shall be “all and in all” 

      • Colossians 3:1-11

      • 1 Corinthians 13:12

      • Psalm 36:9

      • Christ is the fulfillment of all desire, our spouse that unceasingly waits for us

Additional Background

•  “The LORD is my light and my salvation” Psalm 27:1 

• “The LORD shall be your light forever” Isaiah 60:19

•  Messianic fulfillment: “Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you” Isaiah 60:1

• Prophet Simeon “a light for revelation to the Gentiles.” Luke 2:32

• “Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light” Revelation 22:5

• From the same chapter as the “Alpha and Omega”

• The Messiah also brought not only the light but the ability to receive it in every sense and has connection to the Festival of Tabernacles Zechariah 14:7, 16-19; Isaiah 9:1-7

Implications

• A follower of Christ (if we are truly following) is not without the aforementioned “light”(s)

• CCC 748

  • "Christ is the light of humanity; and it is, accordingly, the heart-felt desire of this sacred Council, being gathered together in the Holy Spirit, that, by proclaiming his Gospel to every creature, it may bring to all men that light of Christ which shines out visibly from the Church." These words open the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on the Church. By choosing this starting point, the Council demonstrates that the article of faith about the Church depends entirely on the articles concerning Christ Jesus. The Church has no other light than Christ's; according to a favorite image of the Church Fathers, the Church is like the moon, all its light reflected from the sun.