The Church moves forward like the
advancing dawn.
Since the daybreak or the dawn is
changed gradually from darkness into light, the Church, which comprises the
elect, is fittingly styled daybreak or dawn. While she is being led from the
night of infidelity to the light of faith, she is opened gradually to the
splendor of heavenly brightness, just as dawn yields to the day after darkness.
The Song of Songs says aptly: Who is this who moves forward like the advancing
dawn? Holy Church, inasmuch as she keeps searching for the rewards of eternal
life, has been called the dawn. While she turns her back on the darkness of
sins, she begins to shine with the light of righteousness.
This reference to the dawn
conjures up a still more subtle consideration. The dawn intimates that the
night is over; it does not yet proclaim the full light of day. While it dispels
the darkness and welcomes the light, it holds both of them, the one mixed with
the other, as it were. Are not all of us who follow the truth in this life
daybreak and dawn? While we do some things which already belong to the light,
we are not free from the remnants of darkness. In Scripture the Prophet says to
God: No living being will be justified in our sight. Scripture also says: In
many ways all of us give offense.
When he writes, the night is
passed, Paul does not add, the day is come, but rather, the day is at hand.
Since he argues that after the night has passed, the day as yet is not come but
is rather at hand, he shows that the period before full daylight and after
darkness is without doubt the dawn, and that he himself is living in that
period.
It will be fully day for the
Church of the elect when she is no longer darkened by the shadow of sin. It
will be fully day for her when she shines with the perfect brilliance of
interior light. This dawn is aptly shown to be an ongoing process when
Scripture says: And you showed the dawn its place. A thing which is shown its
place is certainly called from one place to another.
What is the place of the
dawn but the perfect clearness of eternal vision? When the dawn has been
brought there, it will retain nothing belonging to the darkness of night. When
the Psalmist writes: My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I go and
see the face of God?, does he not refer to the effort made by the dawn to reach
its place? Paul was hastening to the place which he knew the dawn would reach
when he said he wished to die and to be with Christ. He expressed the same idea
when he said: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
From the Office of Readings, Thursday of the 9th Week. |
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