The Holy Martyr Pelagia
Acts 10:34-43; John 8:12-20.
Read John 8:12-20
Christ is risen! Truly, He is risen!
In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes the following statement about himself: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life”.
Perhaps it is saying of the Lord, that the Gospel writer, St. John the Theologian, is recalling when he writes in his first epistle: “God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have communion with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth” (1 John 1:5-6).
In both of these passages, the light of Christ is contrasted to a life spent walking in darkness. The word used here (peripeteo) is an hebraism which means the way one conducts themselves throughout their life.
To walk in the light of Christ doesn’t mean that we always live and act perfectly, but it does mean that we live is such a way that when the light of Christ shines into our lives and exposes those areas where we need healing and repentence we allow Christ, the physician of our souls and bodies, to enter and heal us.
The Pharisees in today’s Gospel represent the opposite reaction to the light of Christ. Rather than allow Christ’s words to penetrate and reveal where they need to repent, they harden their hearts against Him refusing to acknowledge the truth of his words while claiming to have communion with God (cf John 8:41).
Because they have not allowed His words to heal them, the Pharisees are unable to recognize the truth of who Jesus is. They are not in him, and he is not in them: “you do not know whence I come or whither I am going. You judge according to the flesh…You know neither me nor my Father; if you knew me, you would know my Father also”.
St. Cyril of Alexandria describes this reality in his commentary on this passage: “…for He is not in you who reveals mysteries and illumines the whole world, like a sun that shines into the hearts of them that receive him. He who has not the divine and spiritual light within him, must surely walk in darkness and stumble into many absurdities” (Commentary on John).
The light of Christ does shine on all, but some prefer darkness to light (cf John 3:19). Jesus does not act against our will. When he comes to us, he asks us, like he asked the paralytic in last Sunday’s Gospel – do you want to be healed? (John 5:6). When this question is asked of us, let us humble ourselves and allow Christ to show us the areas of our lives that need healing so that we may become, not like the Pharisees but like St.Photini, the Samaritian Woman in this coming Sunday’s Gospel – going from walking in darkness to light.