Sowing light

Lent sends me searching for light in the scriptures, in my prayer, and in my sisters and brothers. For light is how God broke into the world in the first place. Let there be light, he said.  He offered the life of his Son to be the light of the human race. A light to shine in the darkness, a light the darkness cannot overcome. Light is what heralded the resurrection, an angel whose arrival shook the earth, shining as bright as lightning in the dimness of a garden at dawn. 

I pray in Lent for God’s light to break into my life, to light the path forward. But Lent’s light is more than what we receive. It’s about who we are, and what we should be about. In his poem, “Sowing Light,” Alden Solovy turns a line from Psalm 97 — Light is sown for the just. [Ps 97:11] — back on itself. Light is what the just must sow, in healing, in blessing, in love, prays Solovy. This is the light we are given. This is the light we must sow. This light, we will hear in the Easter Exsultet, will never be dimmed in the sharing.

This Lent, let us long for light: For the light sown in us, for the light sown by us, for the Light sown for us, for a light that will set us aflame. Let us long to be light itself.

— Excerpted from Not By Bread Alone (2020), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

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I will post daily reflections from Ash Wednesday through the Triduum. Some new, some previously written for Liturgical Press and The Catholic Standard and Times.