How to Stay in the Light

“Go, wash in the pool of Siloam (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing” (John 9:7).
Christ anointed our eyes; and by washing in him, we now see. What happened to the man born blind also happens to us when we believe in Jesus Christ. This is a lesson for the catechumens that will be baptized during the Easter Vigil. Their eyes will be opened, and they will see a whole new world, a new reality, the world of faith, and the new creation of Jesus Christ. In being thus renewed by baptism, they themselves will become a new creation, new men, new creatures, persons renewed by Jesus Christ. We are those persons because we have been baptized in Christ. When we come to have faith in him, we are remade and renewed. We have been anointed by Christ. He anointed our eyes, for as the natural children of Adam we were blind from birth. He anointed us, and we bathed in the pool which is Christ. In doing this with faith, we return seeing. Christ opens our eyes. “Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord” (Eph. 5:8). “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). For this, Christ came into the world, to be its light, to illuminate us, to bring us the splendor of heaven, the heavenly light from which he came, the light in which he lives eternally with the Father. If we believe in him and follow him, we will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life. Christ has given us a promise and a condition. In order to receive the promise, we have to fulfill the condition. To walk in the light (the promise), we have to follow him (the condition), we have to do his will. When we fail to do his will, we fall out of his light, for we have not kept the condition, and we are once again in darkness until we repent and receive his forgiveness anew. How important it is then to always clearly know God’s will and do it exactly. By doing so, we will walk in the light of Christ; and he will shine in our hearts (2 Cor. 4:6). How different was the life of the man born blind after believing in Jesus. And this is only a symbol of the much greater difference in our life after we believe in Jesus Christ. Everything changes for us. We now have a clear goal in life, a purpose for which we live and work. But more important than that, we now live in the light, whereas previously we lived in darkness. We are now light in the Lord, as once we were darkness (Eph. 5:8). We have awakened and risen from the dead, and Christ shines on us (Eph. 5:14). We now proclaim the wonders of him who called us “out of darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet. 2:9). We now see his splendor within us. He reveals his light to us, and we walk in it. He makes us sons of light. We are “sons of light and sons of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness” (1 Thess. 5:5). Many do not walk in the light, for they do not know God’s will. They do not follow it. Nor do they know Jesus who can save them from the darkness. There is a Savior. With faith in him, we can get out of the darkness and walk in the light of Christ. So what is God’s will? He will reveal it to us if we listen to him. The details of his will are different for each person, and he reveals them to us individually. But in general, his will is that we love him with all our heart. This is Jesus’s first and greatest commandment (Mark 12:30). This means not dividing our heart among the unnecessary 8 delights and pleasures of this world but rather living simply, in evangelical poverty, a life detached from worldliness and recollected in him. Such detachment is necessary if we want to love God with all our heart, without any division of heart. Those who live like this and follow the personal indications that he gives them are fulfilling the condition that Jesus laid down for walking in the light. They follow him with all their heart. He who does this will receive the promise. He “will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Christ came into the world to die on the cross so that we might walk in the light, for his vicarious death substituted for us on the cross and served our death sentence for our sins in our place. When we fall out of the light by sinning or by falling into an imperfection, we can once again invoke the merits of his vicarious death and be saved from the pit of darkness into which we have fallen. God knows our condition and weakness and saves us from darkness when we believe in him and invoke the merits of his death on the cross. Then we should try harder in the future to remain in his will in order to remain in the light. In this way we will also remain in his love, for he said, “Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love” (John 15:9-10). To remain in his light is to remain in his love.

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