Hopeful Darkness: Advent, Solstice, and the Light of Christ

Light is the Father, Light the Son,

Light the Holy Ghost;

Wisdom the Father, Wisdom the Son,

Wisdom the Holy Ghost;…

And so, let the faithful adore God

With a mind not over-curious…

Do not ask how the Trinity is Trinity,

For the Trinity is inscrutable. (St. John of Damascus)

Have you ever awoken in the deep darkness of night when the whole world is still? Long after Midnight, long after the mice and owls have left their work and gone to bed. The moon has set, and the earth sits waiting. It is a deep, hopeful darkness. Something will happen soon: the Sun will come to warm the earth and wake the birds. But not yet. First, there is the dark, the womb, the new day beginning. At the solstice, in the season of Advent, Christ opens wide a door in the darkness, to welcome a new year, “full of things that have never been.”

In our little house we celebrate the winter solstice – a little glow of extra joyful hope before the Nativity of Christ. At the winter solstice, the night begins its long retreat – Christ is shifting in the womb of His Mother, anticipating birth. As the sun goes down, we light the yule log with the remnants of last year’s log before adding the new log to the fire.

According to tradition, if you burn a little of the yule log every night between the solstice and Epiphany, then tuck the remains of the log under the bed until the next winter solstice, the year will be full of blessings. Ours leaves little crumbles of soot on the floor and is occasionally chewed on by the over-grown puppy, but it’s warmed our hearts through another trying year of changes and uncertainty.

During the longest night of the year, night lasts over 15 hours. We tend the fire and drink mulled wine, slice the yule cake, and play Parcheesi. We pray the antiphons anticipating Christmas and fill the house with candles.

Forgotten Saints for the Season of Darkness

Drop down dew, you heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain the just: let the earth be opened, and bud forth a Savior. (Isaiah 45:8)

Advent is an often-neglected season. For the world, and even many Catholics, Christmas has already come. Parties (maybe fewer than in previous years), cookie-baking, Christmas songs, and lights everywhere distract us from the reality of waiting.

Advent is full of forgotten saints and devotions as well. Beginning with Andrew – the first-called who leaps into the darkness of uncertainty by being the first to follow Christ. Too often neglected by Western Catholics, Andrew is the patron of the unknown. He calls us, continually, to join Christ in the wild mystery of faith.

With Andrew are the hermits Grwst, Daniel the Stylite, Paul of Latros; St. John Damascus and the Virgin of the Three Hands, and Eustace White – the martyr who uncomfortably reminds us that persecution is not as comfortably far-off as we’d like to think.

The saints of Advent show us darkness and light – as Lucy of the plucked eyes and light-bearing soul, who anticipates both the Advent Ember Days, and the winter solstice so clearly demonstrates. The penitential season is peppered with enthusiastic celebrations. Advent is the dark season, and in it, the light of Christ “shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Meeting God in the Darkness

A billion stars go spinning through the night,
Glittering above your head,
But in you is one who will be
When all the stars are dead. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Our Lady loves the stars. Guadalupe, Stella Maris, Our Lady of Pontmain. In iconography she is always shown with three stars. Mary is the Mother of the stars – a graceful moon glowing amid her many children. Mary is often represented by the moon – reflecting the Sun’s light and glowing bright in the darkness of a fallen world.

It is important to build a relationship with Our Lady that allows her to touch us. Too often we put her in the most accessible box: Queen, Theotokos, Mama, Advocate. She is all these, but only when we remember that they’re only what she is, not who.

Throughout Advent, and especially at the solstice, we see Mary as the one who invites us to meet God in the darkness. Like the moon and stars, she glows through the long nights in “this vale of tears”. Our Lady is grace and wisdom, power and dignity, tenderness, affection, humor, and especially love. She is a woman who was never truly alone – eternally full of the grace of God; and she was a woman more completely alone than any other – sinless among fallen humanity.

Clothed in the sun, with the moon at her feet, the stars cluster like children under her skirts and she gathers them up into arms that ache with love.