Advent, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is the season of diminishing light. The closer we come to the winter solstice, the greater we seem to need hope and reassurance. In the Jewish tradition, this longing culminates in the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah; in the Scandinavian countries, it is addressed by the glowing crowns highlighting St. Lucy’s Day (December 13); in the Western Church, each additional week of Advent provides another candle to ward off the darkness, climaxing in the light of Christ himself. The graver our situation, the greater our longing. Thus the Gospel of John begins with an electrifying assurance: “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never mastered it” (1:5).
Of course, we live far removed from biblical times, even from the gas-lit era of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Ours is an electronic, nuclear age, one that promises we will never want for light or sound. Our cities pulsate in the day and glow at night. We have even learned how to position ourselves globally, using satellites to orient our cars and our missiles, and, by applying the genius of the nocturnal creatures, to attack our enemies or those mistaken for our enemies in their lairs.
The theologian John S. Dunne writes that two questions are directed at Jesus throughout the Gospel of John: Where do you come from? Where are you going? For the believer, the answers are that Jesus comes from the Father, makes the Father known, and in so doing, brings light and salvation to the world. These are glad tidings, the euangelion of the gospel, that the kingdom of God is really among us. But John’s questions concerning Jesus address us as well: Who are we? Why are we here? For what purpose? In our day, the answers are expressed in our relationships, our art and music, education, science, and economics, and in our politics. Increasingly, we define ourselves in nontheological, nonbiblical terms. We cast ourselves in our own image, and our goals are self-determined and self-referential. Not surprisingly, the light we manage to create often seems artificial, tepid, and uninspiring.
For his part, Jesus came not among the self-starters and the conquerors but among the poor. And, by and large, it was they who received his message-not the elites. Granted, on both sides of that sociological equation, we all remain sons and daughters of Cain, grasping and, at times, treacherous of heart. In Sudan, the poor practice genocide on the poor, encouraged by the powerful. Still, when Jesus and his message are welcomed in the Gospel accounts, it is by the pure of heart, those who can see God, who let in the light, whatever the hour of the day. And the results are bounteous: the eyes of the blind are opened, the lame walk. As John puts it (1:16): “From his full store we have all received grace upon grace.” So our task in Advent is to rediscover that abundance, that light upon light, and to allow it to penetrate our world, starting with our own hearts, and then sharing it with others.
On our cover is a reproduction of a small (actual size, c. 8 by 11 inches) Madonna by the early fourteenth-century Sienese painter, Duccio di Buoninsegna. Recently acquired by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (see page 31), this masterpiece has been called “a picture created for patient viewing” that “explored intimacy in a new way.” The painting is something of a landmark in Western art, for it demarcates the new sense of perspective (note the balustrade placed before the figures) pioneered by Duccio and his contemporary Giotto. This Madonna has also been an object of devotion. Its frame bears evidence of several singed areas where candles charred it. No wonder: the two figures represented by Duccio bring to mind John’s heartening words (1:14), for both appear to be “full of grace and truth.”
All masterworks, even those that depict oft-repeated subjects, are revelatory. When given “patient viewing,” Duccio’s Madonna reminds us of the renowned twelfth-century Vladimir icon, which also presents Mary with a star on both her veil and her tunic. Mary is at once graced by the Light and reflects it, a figure akin to God’s Shekhinah, the Hebrew understanding of Divine Wisdom as manifest in feminine guise. In Duccio’s rendering, Mary’s limpid eyes are reservoirs of reflection. They seem to be focused on the far horizon of human thought, to contemplate and embrace the unfathomable heart of suffering and human destiny. Duccio’s small Christ, on the other hand, attends to his Mother, tenderly lifting her veil and looking into her eyes, simultaneously bathing her in light and allowing us to see her beauty and composure.
In attempting to describe the revelation of God in space and time, Christian theologians sometimes speak-and correctly-of the “scandal of particularity” affirmed in Christianity’s belief that God has chosen to dwell among us in person in the flesh of Jesus, son of Mary. The very word incarnation comes from the Latin caro, flesh. Duccio conveys both the boldness and the tenderness of the Christian claim that the God of compassion and of hope is among us in human form-surely such an unlikely revelation that we would not have conceived ourselves. “No one has ever seen God,” John reminds us, but “God’s only son, he who is nearest to the Father’s heart, has made him known” (1:18).
When Jesus first undertook his public ministry, he proclaimed God’s kingdom here and now, and said that his mission was to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah: to bring good news to the poor, to announce the release of captives, to give sight to the blind, and to proclaim the year of the Lord. Each day, the world over, Christians beseech God in words Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come” (adveniat regnum tuum), on earth as in heaven. Each Advent, we are reminded of the task of bringing that kingdom to fulfillment, of serving God in holiness and justice all our days so that our feet may be guided into the way of peace. This Advent, that Christmas Light beckons to us anew. He asks that we lift the veil and cast out the darkness.
