Around 400BC, a fellow named Plato wrote down a thought experiment. I suggest closing your eyes and imagining this as I describe it. Imagine that you have lived your entire life with your head is locked in place, staring at the wall of a cave–remember, our friend Plato is writing in 400BC. The only light in this cave is behind your head. You can’t see where the light comes from. You just see a wall that’s dimly lit. On this wall, you see what we would call shadows, but to you it’s the only thing you’ve ever seen. Everything you know is based on this experience. You don’t know that these things are shadows, because they are the only thing you’ve ever seen. This is the whole of reality to you: shadows dancing on a wall that is dimly lit by a flickering candle.
Then, one day, someone frees you from this place. You can move around. You can turn around and see the candle. But you’ve never seen anything so bright before. It hurts your eyes. You see colors for the first time. Then, you muster the courage to walk and eventually, as you near the mouth of the cave, you start to see light from the Sun for the first time. It is blinding and painful. There is so much to see and experience that it is overwhelming.
In that moment you have one choice to make and one choice alone: do I go back to my dimly lit cave? After all, it has cared for me all these years. It has been everything I’ve ever experienced. I’ve never had any troubles or hardship or heartbreak in the cave. It’s safe.
But what if I keep going forward? Everything is new and unfamiliar. There will be challenges and struggles. It isn’t even close to safe.
If you haven’t already, go ahead and open your eyes.
Why am I telling you all this?
Until we begin to live our lives in true communion with Christ, we are the people in the cave. We human beings do not see things clearly, and often, we don’t want to see them clearly either. When we are offered a chance to live in the light of God, we turn away, preferring our safe little cave, even if it is a little damp and dark.
If humans saw clearly, they would have recognized our Lord on the Cross as what he truly is: the Most High God, mounting his throne, the Cross, in his chariot, human flesh, preparing to ride into battle and destroy the power that Sin and Death have over humanity, and to establish himself unmistakably as King of the Universe who is sovereign over all creatures–angels, humans, and beast–, over all places–not only the earth and that is in it but both Heaven and the entire material universe–, and over all times–from the beginning to the end of all things. But to see this truth and reality would be to see a light that is infinitely more blinding than staring straight into the Sun after seeing it for the very first time. Because our God and King and Savior is not just light, but He is the source of all light and all things that exist. And he will not be contained.
After he destroyed deaths power and freed us from the tyranny of sin, our Lord eventually ascended into Heaven to be with our Father, but his light has never left this earth. He promised that he would be with us until the end of the age, until that moment when the last resistance to the rule of God is blotted out from this earth. He left the visible sign of his kingdom on this world to guide us, to give us safe harbor, and to help us see clearly, and that sign is his Church. He warned us of what we would face: those claiming to speak on his behalf or to be him would come into this world and try to deceive us. They would persecute us and torture us and try to lead us away from him. We would live in a time of great tribulation, but we need not fear. If we choose to accept the gift of Christ’s life and to unite ourselves to his Body, the Church, he will strengthen us through his glorious power and teach us both perfect patience and long suffering so that, through these trials which cleanse us and perfect us, we will learn to joyfully render thanks and praise to God Most High.
We must choose to leave behind our former way of life, that dark cave of shadows, and step into the light of life in Christ. We must choose to follow the footsteps of the firstborn of all creation, of the one who created all that is, of the one who is light from light and true God from true God, of the one who reconciled all things to himself by his blood on the Cross. We must choose not to live safely, but to live boldly, because we no longer follow shadows, but Jesus, the Christ, who is our Lord, our God, and King of all the Universe.