You will not walk in darkness.

Before Mass every morning in Mary Help of Christians Basilica, one of the monks crosses the sanctuary to the tabernacle lamp, draws a bright drop of flame up from the glass, and carries it back to light the candles on either side of the altar.

A tethered morsel of warmth and illumination coheres in fluid shape, and what seemed, seconds ago, to be inert wax and a braided few fibers of wick reveals itself capable of bearing flame – of offering its own substance to sustain light.

The Mass begins, and the candles burn steadily, drawing our gazes toward the table of the Lord’s Supper. But as they do, they also manage to echo the Death and Resurrection enacted – and embodied – there. Images of self-gift and generosity, which burn away without losing brightness, the candles offer a small sign of that profound, eucharistic Love by which Christ both feeds us with His incarnate Self and kindles in us the light of His undiminished divinity.

“I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). We’ve heard His words countless times. But until recently, I’d never noticed the way He links this light with the world itself, with life. Christ’s light is never purely external to our humanness, illuminating only from the outside. It permeates and transforms life because its source is God incarnate, God who became man and lived among us, who invites the candle substance of our lives to bear His illuminating gift.

As we approach tonight’s luminous Easter Vigil, when we will carry the Paschal fire back into the church and fill the waiting dark with candlelight, let’s remember this joyful reality: that as Christians we, too, are called to give ourselves in luminous acts of love – and that through the mercy of Christ who is light and candle, priest and sacrifice, God and man, we will never lose the eternal light for and in which we offer our lives.

God bless you in this holy and glorious season of Light!