“A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you” (John 12:35)
Jesus is calling His listeners to action. Walk is best translated keep on walking. Those who were on the way with Him must keep on going wherever He was moving, because He is the Light of the world. To walk away is to stray into darkness. If it was confusing to follow Him, it was worse to forsake Him. He was addressing His own Jewish people. They couldn’t decide who or what He was; however, time was running out. It wouldn’t be long before others would make up their minds that He was a threat to their style of life, and they had to be rid of Him.
For us today it means that the light of faith can be extinguished when we no longer walk with Christ. That reality comes to me especially on Holy Saturday and the Sunday of Resurrection. Those who have made the Lenten journey approach the Finish Line with radiant faces, filled with inner joy, glorious in the presence of the risen and living Lord. They listen with rapt attention to the ultimate sermon, that from the Golden Mouth inviting all to the Feast of Feasts. So you started at the dawn of Lent and stumbled along the way. It’s OK. Come anyway. Or maybe you were away until Cross Sunday, but picked up from there. Perhaps something came barging into your routine and thwarted your intentions to pray, meditate and fast, and you couldn’t do so until Palm Sunday. Never mind. If your intentions were pure, then your heart followed suit. Don’t be shy; you are welcome.
In melancholy contrast are those who appear with their baskets to be blessed, but have no interest in the services. Orthodoxy is only nostalgia—for them it’s a time to recall their childhood and the paschal traditions of their parents. They remember the past, but what they recall is a jumble of long prayers, mostly in a strange language, scents of incense and sounds of unfamiliar chanting to which they were required to bow and make some motion before their faces with their right hands. I sprinkle their baskets with Holy Water and search in their eyes for some flicker of light, but I find either sadness or nothing at all. I look down at their children and grandchildren, wondering and hoping that maybe they will be led by the living Light to examine their spiritual heritage one day.
The irony of our times is that many in search of a life in Christ have found their way to the Orthodox Church. Those who have embraced the true faith exhibit a gusto that invigorates us “cradle Orthodox” with their enthusiasm, and the light that shines from their passion glows and radiates throughout the Church. One need but notice the many converts who are in our clergy even to the rank of episcopacy. Those who entered Orthodoxy as adults in America almost exclusively populate our monasteries here. It seems that we have more success in gaining members from the non-Orthodox than we do by rekindling the faith in those who had been baptized in infancy. Christ the Light of the world is also the sword who divides family members between the believers and the former believers. Holidays are the worst of times, when those who share the blessed food from the paschal baskets are not all the same ones who have partaken of the true Bread of Life in the Holy Eucharist.