Light or Darkness
- Michael Haldas
- Jul 9
- 5 min read
“God is He of Whom no questions would arise within us if we weren’t sinful, if we hadn’t fallen from Paradise, as chicks fall from their nest—all would be otherwise, and God would not be a problem. But now God is a problem and a question. Does God exist? And if He exists, where is He? And if He exists and where—then what is He like? What do I owe Him? What does He owe me? A thousand questions arise within us. But none of this would be if we didn’t sin, if sin didn’t blind our eyes. We should recognize that all difficult and tricky questions about God are difficult precisely because of our sinfulness and the darkening of our minds. The darkened human intellect, the weakened human will, the worn-out man—he is disoriented, today he thinks one thing, and tomorrow another, now he thinks one thing, and within half an hour something completely different. Within a single minute his heart can fluctuate from the right to the left, because, again, he is disoriented and clouded.” (Archpriest Andrei Tkachev)
“When it comes to the moral and spiritual darkness that now plagues our culture and our Church, the only possible way out is to invite light into those spaces. According to the Scriptures and our Tradition God is not only a source of light, He is light. Moreover, He has sent Christ, who is also that light, into this world, in order to illuminate the intellectual, moral, and spiritual spaces of human existence. However, we can and regularly do draw the proverbial curtains preventing that light from entering, leaving us in the darkened spaces of our own hearts and minds, unable to see truth, unable to make sound moral choices, unable to really understand the faith we claim to practice.” (Fr. Edward Rommen)
“The wisdom of this world sweeps aside the Wisdom of God as unnecessary and irrelevant. It foolishly prides itself that its house is neatly put in order (Mt 12:43-44), but for what purpose? To receive a host of demons (vs. 45)? This world will always disdain the wisdom of Christ and ignore His warnings. Men “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom 1:18), and as a result they become “futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts [become] darkened. Professing to be wise, they [become] fools” (Rom 1:21-22). Let us look carefully to our hearts and souls!” (Dynamis 7/8/2020)
“If our spiritual blindness is being healed, then we will become radiant with the light of His mercy, providing a sign of hope to our neighbors in our darkened world. In order to gain the spiritual clarity to do that, we must shut our eyes to all that would keep us stumbling in the darkness of sin and enslaved to the fear of death. Because the eyes of our souls are not yet fully transparent to the light of the Lord, none of us has perfect spiritual vision. We do not yet see or know God, our neighbors, or ourselves clearly, but in ways that are deeply distorted by our passions. That is why we must struggle to become fully receptive to the brilliant divine energies of our Lord through the healing found in the sacramental and ascetical life of the Church.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
“Within the tradition of the Church, asceticism is philokalia, love for the beauty of that ‘uncompleted perfection’ which is personal fulfillment, the restoration of God’s darkened image in man to its original beauty…Only the mind which has been cleansed from the passions and the darkness of sin, and has been sanctified by the grace of the Holy Spirit, is in a position to feel and to love that which is holy and to live from it and for it.” (Christos Yannaras, St. Justin Popovic)
“This spiritual, incorrupt, eternal light communicated to our souls is Christ our God Himself, the true Light that enlightens every man that comes into the world. Spiritual darkness is sin—the culprit and author of sin is the prince of darkness, the devil, who darkens and seduces mankind with sin, teaches every sin, and draws man to eternal destruction…We choose to live either in light or in darkness.” (St. John of Kronstadt, Orthodox Study Bible, Wisdom of Solomon 15:7)
“… many people, maybe even we ourselves, prefer darkness to the light. Feeling comfortable with wicked deeds, with the deeds of darkness, doesn’t just prevent us from loving the light, but makes us fear it, as well. Sometimes even to hate it. Because then we, like [Constantine] Cavafis, feel the Light as a new tyranny. This is what he says in his poem ‘The Windows’. Living in the darkness of his passions, on the one hand he seeks windows onto the light, but, on the other, he trembles at the prospect of finding them: ‘But the windows are nowhere to be found; or I can’t find them. Perhaps it’s better if I don’t. The light may be a new tyranny. Who knows what new things it might reveal?’ ” (Archimandrite Varnavas Lambropoulos)
“Not seeing our sins is a sign of spiritual illness. Why did the ascetics see their sins as innumerable, as the sand of the sea? It’s simple: They drew near to the source of light—to God—and began to notice secret places of their souls that we simply don’t notice. They observed their soul in its true state. Here’s a fairly familiar example: Let’s say your room is dirty, not cleaned up, but it’s night and everything’s hidden in semi-darkness. It seems like everything is basically okay. But then dawn breaks through the window and the first ray of sunlight penetrates the room, illuminating half of it. And you start to notice the mess. You notice it more and more as the day goes on, and when the sun illuminates the entire room, the dirt and your scattered things are visible everywhere. The closer you are to God, the more visible are your sins.” (Archpriest Pavel Gumerov)
“If we are weak and sick with sin, we need corrective lenses, a light to illumine the darkness we find ourselves in. And if we need to be transformed or purified, that means that fallen humanity unaided and untransformed cannot properly see or perceive, hear or understand true reality (see Mark 4: 12), especially spiritual realities, as one can notice many times in the Gospel accounts….spiritual transformation through the grace of the Holy Spirit is necessary for true seeing, true understanding….what one is able to see, to discern—one’s ability to interpret—depends directly upon one’s spiritual state….how one interprets, one’s very ability to interpret, or “see,” depends directly upon one’s spiritual state.” (Dr. Mary S. Ford)
“Since none of us has perfect spiritual clarity and we often find ourselves anxious about very small things, we must intentionally open the eyes of our souls to Christ through prayer, fasting, and generosity, even as we struggle mindfully to resist the temptation to make anything in this world a false god. The daily circumstances of our lives all provide countless opportunities for us to do precisely that. If we will use them for our salvation, and humbly repent whenever we have not, then the light of Christ will illumine us as we unite ourselves evermore fully to Him. That is how we may all learn to “seek first His kingdom and His righteousness” in a world that remains so full of darkness and presents so many temptations to idolatry and fear. He is the light that we all need in order to see clearly and live faithfully each and every day of our lives.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)
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