3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2026
Isaiah 9: 1-4; Psalm 26 (27); 1Cor 10-13, 17; Matthew 4:12-17
In July 2008, I became the parish priest of the ancient rural parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, Claughton-on-Brock (pronounced “Clyton”) where the earliest record of the celebration of Mass dates from the 13th century, where adherence to the “Old Faith” was maintained throughout the centuries of persecution, and in which I have roots via my paternal grandmother, who grew up in a farmhouse built in 1680, a listed building with a second listed building in the garden in the form of a two seater privy (believe it or not). How many listed toilets are there in this country, I wonder?
One of the first things I was told upon arrival was “Nobody rushes in Claughton” a very sensible attitude which the rest of the world would do well to adopt, and all went without a hitch until a certain autumn afternoon. That was the occasion of my trekking up the lane to visit a couple whom I knew from a previous existence.
As I was leaving at the end of my visit, the lady of the house asked me “Have you a torch with you?” I was puzzled: why should I have a torch?
I discovered the answer as soon as I stepped outside. I had never lived in the country before. Our shop, where I grew up, was situated on the A6 in the Scotforth district of Lancaster, and my various parish appointments had been, thus far, in urban settings. I had never encountered the total blackness of a rural environment. The only street lamp is outside the entrance of the graveyard. Why the people there are in greater need of a light than the rest of us, I have no idea. Without the torch which was kindly lent to me, I should have fallen into the ditch within the first ten yards.
Came the following Candlemas, and I was delivering an Assembly in the Primary School. “What do you think was the hardest thing for me, coming to live in the country?” I asked. One or two tentative suggestions were made, but it was clear that the children couldn’t imagine anything difficult in rural living. Eventually, one lad, with an embarrassed giggle, proposed “the smell of the cow muck”. No. It was definitely the darkness, and only the darkness. Everything else was pure joy.
Light is something which we don’t miss until it is not there, and that is something which rarely happens to us townies. Hence, we may struggle to capture the full force of today’s First Reading, Psalm, and Gospel.
“The people which walked in darkness has seen a great light” says Isaiah. “Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.” His hearers would have understood the importance, the power, of light. But what sort of light did he have in mind?
We find an answer to that in the Psalm, where we pray “The Lord is my light and my salvation”. Our Gospel passage takes that explanation further, as Matthew repeats Isaiah’s prophecy of dawning light, and then quotes the beginning of Jesus’ preaching, in the terms of the kerygma, the basic proclamation: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.
So the light takes the form of a spiritual enlightenment. The Kingdom, or Reign, of God is at hand, if only we have the will, the determination, and the gumption to look for it and to recognise it. To grasp it we need repentance, metanoia, a change of our basic outlook and orientation—a change of heart.
Fair enough, but it is still the case that we may need darkness if we are fully to appreciate light. This may be a darkness of personality, a bewilderment, a loss of direction, for some of us even a depression. On the other hand, or in addition, it may be a spiritual darkness.
One of the greatest exponents of spiritual enlightenment was St. John of the Cross, the mediaeval reformer of the Carmelite Order. He coined the phrases “the Night of the Senses” and “the Dark Night of the Soul”. The latter suggests that we may have to lose our sense of God’s presence in order to be given a new insight, new enlightenment. Our understanding of God is always inadequate, and we may have to be deprived of what we thought we knew of Him, that the light may burst upon us more fully. St, Therese of Lisieux and St. Teresa of Kolkota passed through these periods of intense darkness, as did, we may say, Our Lord Himself, when He cried out from the Cross “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and, according to St. Mark, yielded up His spirit with a cry.
This was the Dark Night of the Soul which even God’s Son had to endure in order for the light of the Father’s countenance to shine fully upon Him. We too may go through the darkness, but we can be sure that a clearer, more dazzling light will shine.
