Walking in the True Light

Christmas does not end with wrapping paper and weary smiles; it widens. In these days after the Nativity, Scripture draws our gaze from the manger’s glow to the way light actually travels; into habits, relationships, and public witness. Today’s readings braid three threads: love as the sure sign of knowing Christ, a light that reveals and heals, and the courage to be contradicted. Woven together, they offer a gentle but bracing way to live when the world feels dark or divided.

The Light That Is Already Shining

Saint John writes that “the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” That “already” matters. The light is not merely a promise for someday; it is present, at work, and accessible. Yet John is unsentimental: to claim to be in the light while hating a brother or sister is self-deception. Light is not a mood; it is a manner of life. It clarifies what is in us; resentments, prejudices, fears; and invites us to walk as Jesus walked: truthful, merciful, unhurried in love.

In a culture that monetizes outrage and rewards hot takes, this is a narrow way. It is easier to curate a persona than to keep a commandment; easier to perform goodness than to persevere in it. But light exposes our performative streaks without shaming us. It says, “Come further in.” If we let Christ’s light touch the places where our love has cooled; family wounds, old rivalries, quiet contempt; the path brightens beneath our feet.

Love: The Old Commandment, Always New

John calls the commandment of love both old and new. It is old because it has always been the path; new because in Christ it becomes embodied and empowered. Love is not simply “be nice.” It is willing the good of the other, at cost, in truth. It is refusing to let another’s sin recruit us into sin. It is more than tolerance and more than sentiment; it is covenant fidelity in miniature, practiced at the kitchen table, at work, and online.

This “old-new” commandment feels new whenever it reaches an edge we have not yet yielded: forgiving the relative who does not apologize, blessing the colleague who undercuts us, refusing to caricature a political opponent, staying in conversation with someone who cannot yet see what seems so clear to us. Each time love moves into a frontier we were guarding, it feels like fresh light.

A Child, a Sword, and the Truth About Us

In the Temple, an old man holds an infant and names him the world’s salvation. Simeon’s song is luminous, but his prophecy is edged: this child will be a sign that is contradicted, and a sword will pierce Mary’s soul. Christmas joy is not naïve. The Light reveals; not to humiliate, but to heal. Revelation stings before it saves.

To encounter Jesus is to be seen all the way down. Our lives split at the seams where we clutch control, where we prefer admiration to obedience, or where our “principles” are really protections. The Gospel does not merely comfort; it converts. It asks for our false selves and returns us our truer ones.

Mary’s pierced heart belongs to every parent who sits up late with worry, every caregiver who keeps watch, every believer who loves and therefore suffers. In her, faith does not eliminate pain; it gives pain a horizon. The sword that pierces does not have the last word. The child does.

The Poverty of the Offering and the Grandeur of God

Mary and Joseph bring the simple sacrifice permitted to the poor: birds, not a lamb. The Lord of heaven arrives by way of small means and quiet fidelity to the Law. Holiness hides comfortably in the ordinary. For many, December and January are not restful but tight: tight budgets, tight schedules, tight hearts. God is not embarrassed by small offerings. He receives the spare minutes prayed between tasks, the discreet alms we can afford, the choice to hold our tongue when sarcasm begs to speak. Heaven’s grandeur moves through such levers.

Simeon’s Peace for Restless Hearts

Simeon can finally rest because his hope has seen a face. He is not naïve about what lies ahead; he is simply anchored. Many are restless: aging parents, those between jobs, students unsure of their path, people carrying private diagnoses. Peace does not require control of outcomes; it requires confidence in Presence. Christ is that Presence. He does not compress the future into a tidy plan; he accompanies us into it.

A practice worth reclaiming: end the day with Simeon’s words; “Now, Lord, you can let your servant go in peace”; as a nightly surrender. List what you cannot fix today. Hand it back. Sleep inside a promise kept.

Saint Thomas Becket: Conscience in a Calculated Age

Today also holds the optional memorial of Saint Thomas Becket, the twelfth-century Archbishop of Canterbury. Once a powerful royal chancellor and friend of King Henry II, Thomas underwent a conversion when made bishop. He began to defend the Church’s freedom and the dignity of her courts against royal overreach. For this, he was cut down in his own cathedral in 1170.

Becket speaks to an age that prizes expediency. He reminds us that conscience, rightly formed, is not a private preference but a place where truth binds us. His martyrs’ blood asks difficult questions: What do I bend when pressure comes? Where do I mute my witness to keep favor? How do I uphold both truth and charity without surrendering either? Becket’s courage is not combative bravado; it is costly fidelity. He stood firm without hatred and died forgiving.

Practicing the Light Today

• Make reconciliation concrete. Identify one person you avoid or resent. Pray for their good daily for a week. If appropriate, take one step toward peace: a note, a call, a simple kindness without scorekeeping.
• Fast from contempt. For the next news cycle, refuse to share or “like” anything that trades in mockery. Curate your feed for truth and mercy.
• Give a poor offering gladly. Choose a small, specific alms or act of service you can sustain this week. God delights in the widow’s mite.
• End your day with Simeon. Before sleep, speak his prayer and return all unfinished business to God.
• Ask for Becket’s courage. Where your faith intersects with work, family, or civic life, seek the grace to be principled and peaceable, unafraid to be a “sign of contradiction” without becoming a contradiction to love.

The psalm bids creation itself to sing a new song. That newness is not novelty; it is the old commandment of love lived today. The darkness truly is passing. The true light is already shining; in a child held by an old man, in a mother who keeps pondering through pain, in a martyr who would not sell his soul, and in any heart that decides, again today, to walk as Jesus walked.