Light of the Cosmos

Lent approaches, and the Epiphany light turns our eyes towards the Cross

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” (Jn 8:12)

So runs the second of Jesus’ great proclamations beginning “I am,” by which He echoes  and identifies Himself with the Holy Name God spoke to Moses from the burning bush.

These words lend the theme to William Holman Hunt’s beloved Pre-Raphaelite oil painting which hangs in the Tractarian-founded Keble College, Oxford, and adorns the glass of many an English parish church. Holman Hunt was careful to leave no handle on the outside of the door, making the point that it can be opened to the light of Him who knocks only from the inside, by us who dwell in the darkness within.

A fine image, it conveys a spiritual truth. And yet it inevitably reflects something of the preoccupation of its time, and ours: a certain psychologisation of the Gospel, focussing on the personal and individual response. This is important, and we will come back to it. However, there is more.

The focus of Our Lord’s beam has been somewhat narrowed in translation. We Anglophones are so used to hearing the phrase “Light of the World” that we may be lose sight of the fullness of its scope. The Greek word which, for centuries, has been rendered “world” in English bibles is in fact cosmos. The semantic range of this word was limited somewhat by its translation into Latin mundus (hence, lux mundi), and more so by the English “world,” although even that word used to hold a wider meaning than it does now. Whenever we hear “world” in the Bible, it is wise to think of it in a wider, poetic sense, not just of the planet Earth, but all physical existence. When Christ refers to Himself as the divine Light, He is not claiming only to shine on those who open the door to Him in the darkness of their individual hearts (though this is certainly included), nor even to be the light to lighten the peoples of this planet (though this too is included), but to the be true sun which gives light and life to the whole of existence: the Light of the Cosmos.

Older depictions cast this cosmic light more broadly, particularly the iconic images of Christ Pantocrator, “all-ruler,” traditionally painted in the apses of Byzantine churches. A striking Western example is found in the fresco Maiestas Domini from the Spanish church of St Clement of Taüll, now preserved in the National Art Museum of Catalunya:

Here, Christ bears in His hand a Gospel book opened to the words recorded by St John, ego sum lux mundi, “I am the light of the world.” Yet the rest of the painting shows that the scope of that “world” is more than just terrestrial. Christ is emerging from a mandorla, that almond-shaped portal of blue by which iconographers depict the irruption of heaven into the created realm. About His head are the letters Alpha and Omega, first and last of the Greek alphabet, echoing the words of Revelation (1:8, 22:13) by which Christ proclaimed Himself the Lord of all time and space, eternally existent. Hence, He is in seated posture, as on the heavenly throne. The round “world” as we conventionally construe it rests beneath His feet, covered in Edenic flora. He is flanked by the four Evangelists, the writers of the Gospels, who have taken the place of angels in the heavenly host, which also falls under His subjection. And note the relative size of these two kingdoms: the small globe that we in our blindness think the limit of life and our only home is tiny in comparison to the vastness of the heavens wherein our true home lies. Yet Christ is the one Sun which illumines, warms, nourishes and gives gravity to all in heaven, on earth and under the earth: the Cosmic Light.

“I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.” The scope of these seemingly simple words is dizzying. As we move from Epiphany to Lent, we might recall that the Magi looked up to the skies to see the Christ light, and “followed” that light all the way to Bethlehem. Their gaze was upward, at the cosmos. And yet, when they reached the cave, their gaze was pulled quickly down to a bloody baby in a manger. It brings on a certain spiritual vertigo. The love of Christ is in both the “height and depth” (Ephesians 3:18). We must look both up and down.

Hence we return to the dark and earthy tones of Holman Hunt. For we remain in the animal cave, down here in the deep green forests of the sphere at Christ’s feet. The handle to the door is indeed on the inside, but we see it only when we hear the knocking. That knocking is the rumbling of the cosmos, the echo of the flutter of angel wings, all reverberating to the rhythm beat out by the divine hand. The door is the portal to the heavens, and to the Love enthroned there who moves the stars and all the planets. For He is God, invisible to our eyes, who yet makes all things visible; beyond all things, who yet emits the spiral rays which in their straight trajectory give the order, rule and harmony that make existence possible: the Light of the Cosmos.

When, with the Magi, we catch a glimpse of that light, we are compelled like them to seek our way home “by another way” (Matthew 2:12). For we are changed by the light, driven from our comforts into the Lenten wilderness. With our eyes raised up to heaven, we tread the dusty path beneath our feet, towards Jerusalem and that Tree with limbs that span the whole cosmos, its length and breadth and height and depth: the Tree of Life; the Tree of the Cross.