Following Jesus with the Saints in Advent
“St. Lucy:
Courage from the Light that Shines in the Darkness”
December 14, 2016
INI
If you
were raised with any Scandinavian traditions, you may have celebrated St. Lucy’s
Day or Lucia (Loo-see-ah) as she
would be called. Her name means “light”
taken from lux or lucis in Latin. In the days when the Julian Calendar was
used, December 13 was the shortest, hence the darkest, day of the year and Lucy
the light-bearer became popular in the far north. In homes, schools, and churches, a young girl
is chosen to portray Lucy. She wears a
white robe with a red sash and a wreath with candles on her head, leading a
procession of other children dressed in various costumes and singing songs.
Lucy was
a courageous Christian virgin and martyr.
She reminds us of the struggle between light and darkness, even though
some pagan traditions may have become mixed up with her festival. The darkness was especially frightening to
the ancient Swedes and Norsemen, with trolls and demons and the spirits of the
dead that would be active outside. But
those old myths contain some truth, don’t they?
Demons are real. The devil still
does prowl around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour.
But no
matter how cute or pretty the fair maiden is who gets to be Lucy for a day, the
circumstances of her martyrdom were neither sweet nor cute. Lucy was born to a wealthy family in Syracuse
on the island of Sicily late in the 3rd century. She had dedicated herself to serve Christ and
never to marry. Her desire was to give
her dowry to the poor. But Lucy’s widowed
mother arranged for her to be married to a pagan man who did not want Lucy to
give away her wealth, so he reported his betrothed to the governor. The governor ordered Lucy to burn a sacrifice
before an image of the Roman emperor, since the emperor was considered
divine. As a faithful Christian, this
was something she could not do in good conscience. Her sentence was to be sent to live in a
brothel. As the story goes, Lucy refused
to go. When the soldiers who were sent
to take her away could not move her, they hitched her up to a team of
oxen. Even then, she could not be
moved. When they piled wood around her
and attempted to burn her alive, the wood would not catch fire. Finally, a soldier plunged a sword into her
neck and she died. One later tradition
also states that before she was put to death, her eyes were gouged out.
As in the
case of all the martyrs, the darkness seems to win. The kingdom of heaven suffers violence, as
Jesus said, and the violent take it by force.
Christ’s followers face opposition, they are persecuted, maimed, and killed. Jesus foretold this. If it happened to him, it would happen to us.
The opposition
that we face today is not always violent.
But it is a daily reality for our brothers and sisters in Christ in
other places. Yet we certainly face
opposition from the world around us.
Sometimes it may come from our fellow parishioners. It also comes from our own sinful heart that
wants nothing to do with God and his Word.
Our eyes
may be just fine, but Satan loves to blind us to the realities of living as a
follower of Jesus. He tries to blind us
so that we don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes, so that we are only
concerned with what we can see right in front of us. When this happens, we refuse to take
seriously the forces of evil at work. We
begin to doubt whether God is really present.
We don’t really trust that his Word is powerful. We don’t really trust in the efficacy of the
Sacraments. We think that we need to
spice things up a bit. We despair when
our church is not growing. We are
tempted to think that the Holy Spirit must not be working here. We blame ourselves and ask, “What am I doing
wrong?” We doubt whether God really
loves us when rotten things happen to us.
But Jesus
came to bring sight to the blind. Jesus
came to bring light into this world darkened by sin, evil, and death. He has come to bring sight and light to you.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in
a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined” … “For to us a child is
born, to us a son is given” … or as Ambrose would have us sing:
From the manger newborn light
Shines in glory through the night.
Darkness there no more resides;
In this light faith now abides.
Shines in glory through the night.
Darkness there no more resides;
In this light faith now abides.
The
light of Christ enables you to look at the Baby in the Manger and by faith know
that this is God in the flesh. The light
of Christ enables you to look at that Man suffering and dying on the cross of
Calvary and by faith know that this is God loving you to the bitter end, paying
the price for your sins so that you could be forgiven and reconciled to
God. The light of Christ enables you now
to see beyond your own nose and by faith recognize the heavenly realities all
around you. To see God at work in your
life. To see Jesus present and active
through his Word. To see his Body and
Blood present for you in the Holy Supper.
To trust him for all your needs of body and soul. To encourage you when we despair. To give you courage in the face of all the
forces of darkness and to boldly take a stand for truth like Lucy. Because Christ has already conquered the forces
of darkness at the cross and the empty tomb.
Even
John the Baptist may have had some issues here, believing that Jesus was the
promised Messiah. He sent his followers
to ask Jesus, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” But Jesus pointed John to the works that he
had done, reminding him that the Messiah to come would do the exact things that
Jesus was doing … giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, cleansing
lepers, making the deaf to hear, raising up the dead, preaching good news to
the poor. All these things that Jesus
did in his First Advent point us toward his Second Advent, when all the dead
will be raised, all the baptized will live forever, we will be in the very
presence of the Light where there will be no more darkness. And there will be new eyes for Lucy, new eyes
for you, restored bodies for all of you, no more glasses, no more contacts, no
more meds, no more dentures, no more scars, except for the scars on Jesus’
hands and feet that prove eternally that he is the one who earned a place in
eternity for you.
So
be inspired today by the witness of Lucy the light-bearer. Take courage from the light that shines in
the darkness, Jesus your Savior. Go and
be a light-bearer wherever the Lord sends you.
INI
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