“‘Once you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord’ (Eph. 5:8)…It is in Jesus Christ that you learn to walk always with your eyes open and to direct your gaze always towards Him.” – Bishop Bossuet

Before You, we walked with our eyes closed because it did not matter.  Open or closed, it was all dark.  

But then You came—the Dawn.  And you came so quietly, so gently, so softly through the Virgin.  

And suddenly it mattered.  Suddenly, it mattered if we walked with our eyes open or closed.  For the first time since the Fall, we could choose You again.  We could choose to walk with our eyes opened.  And if we dared to open our eyes, if we dared to gaze into the Radiant Dawn, well, we too would become light.

You change it all.  Where there was shame in darkness, there is Mercy in Light.  Where there was emptiness in darkness, You abide in Light.  Where there was anxiety in darkness, You pour forth peace in Light.  Where there was fear in darkness, You breathe hope in Light.  And where we knew only darkness, You showed us love in Light—the deepest, most profound, most mystifying, most radiant love we have ever known.

When Divine Love breathed in that tiny human body, something knocked on our hearts and whispered, “You can open your eyes now—you can see the Light.”

Suddenly, we could gaze on the Dawn because the Dawn was not too bright for our darkened eyes.  You hid the radiance in Your Sacred Heart, in the mantle of the Woman.  The Dawn was ordinary in the infant.  The Word made flesh, Love made Incarnate, God made Man—and yet we could behold it all in the meek and humble infant child.  

She held you for us.  She held you as we trembled at the mystery.  She held you as we dared to heed the whisper and open our eyes.  And once we opened our eyes to see the Dawn, she said “This is my body given for you.”  She wrapped You in swaddling clothes, the same way she wrapped You thirty years later when You descended the Cross and she laid You in the tomb.  She wrapped You and she laid You in that manger—food for the starving world.  She did not grasp You or hide Your light.  She laid you down and she beckoned, “Come and see”, with her open and surrendered hands.

Perhaps it was her whisper that we heard knock, “Open your eyes.”

Open your eyes, He is here.  His unbroken fidelity has given us the Promised Dawn.  He is faithful, He is gentle, He is worth our beholding.  He remembers His Promise, He knows our longing.  Light is dawning.  Light is here.  Let Him dawn in you.

Open your eyes, come near, and embrace the One who feeds your soul, who desires your heart, who speaks your peace.  Receive His Light, prepare His way, He will surely guide your feet in the way of His Peace.  Light has dawned, there is no other—open your eyes and see.  See, for the first time, this most Radiant Dawn and let yourself choose Him.

O Come, let us adore.