Advent and Christmas draw us into the darkness: Advent to prepare us and Christmas to pierce the darkness with love, before the tiny light of Christ at Christmas grows into a blinding flash at the resurrection.
Only by outfacing death can we apprehend resurrection. For resurrection is the antidote to death. Only by entering into the dark, and allowing the dark traction on our lives, can we find the meaning of light its miraculous nature and its wondrousness.
But darkness has different effects on different people. For those who are afraid, darkness is likely to produce anger and rage. A primitive response is to meet fear with fear. Perhaps, our anxious instincts surmise, there may lurk a hidden weakness in the darkness we have not seen which may take fright if we shout and rage back. This is the pagan response in the face of a terrifying unknowing.
For pagans darkness is experienced as a deep threat. Since death is the ultimate darkness the pagan will want to confront it, albeit with a kind of dramatic lunge for nobility, to keep it at bay for as long as possible with as much power as possible. And in case the nobility is wasted on the darkness, then at least fear has been met with fear, rage with rage.
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas becomes the great spokesman of the pagan resistance against the dark. And he caught the imagination of many when he wrote energetically and poignantly: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
We have come to know a lot about rage in our culture. A Pandora’s Box of anger was opened by the school of therapy as clients were invited to “get in touch with their anger”, only to discover that anger was not something you could simply just get in touch with.
Like fire, once lit, it had the capacity for burning out of control, moving from the badly-kept grate and hearth to burning down the whole house.
We meet the hardly-controlled fire of rage and anger everywhere we go, from international conflict to the local supermarket trolley queue; from tempestuous attempts at marriage to road junctions and roundabouts.
But Christian faith surely invites a different kind of response from the terrified rage of the pagan confronting the dying of the light.
Without knowing it, Dylan Thomas had the key in his use of the word “gentle”. The truth was the opposite of what he had instinctively reached out for. To Thomas, to the pagan mind, gentle is a sign of weakness, of subservience, of being overcome by the enemy.
But in the dimension of reality that Christ came to lead us into, paradox is the key to wisdom. Weakness overpowers brute force, meekness has more traction than rage, love overwhelms power, and gentle – which has been so badly translated as “meek” – is the key that picks the lock to open the door into God’s presence.
At the darkest point of the year, at least in the northern hemisphere, Christ the eternal logos would slip silently and gently into history. Gentleness not power would be the key to entering time and space to save and subvert it with forgiveness.
For those who traced the awe of what was achieved in the Incarnation into this new paradigm of love and compassion, gentleness became the means.
Too often the Beatitudes, in which Jesus taught this renewal of mind and perception, are heard with pagan ears. The word used for “meek” is praus. This is the word that describes empowered restraint; strength under control; the sheathed sword.
Its meaning is best understood in the context of ancient Greek military training. The army, it is said, would find the wildest horses in the mountains and capture them. After months of training, they sorted the horses into categories: some were discarded, others were put into ordinary duty. A very few excelled in obedience and restraint and were put into higher disciplined service. When a horse passed the conditioning required for this it was described as praus, which we have translated as “meek”. Meek is “power-under-control”.
The meekness, restrained-power of Christ will give us the Incarnation in silence and humility in the darkness of the night.
GK Chesterton reminds us that only by being willing to encounter the darkness can we make any sense of the wonder of light: “Until we see the background of darkness, we cannot admire the light as a single and created thing. As soon as we have seen that darkness, all light is lightening, sudden, blinding, and divine.”
Only an apprehension of the gentleness of Christ piercing time and space with humility allows us to face the dark night, and to go “gentle” into it.
Instead of rage we reach for praise, until our poetic refrain turns Dylan’s words and meaning on their head.
Do, do go gentle into that dark night, then, and praise, praise the coming of the Light.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.