Waiting in Darkness

by Jenny Klejeski

“Advent is the season of the secret, the secret of the growth of Christ, of Divine Love growing in silence.” - Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God

There are few sights that fill my heart with hope more than a lit sanctuary lamp.

In college, I would often wear myself ragged with studying into the wee hours of the night. I would trudge from the library back to my dorm in the dark, across long, open quads, weighed down by my backpack and mild existential despair. Sometimes I would come back so late that the first birds of the morning would be merrily whistling away, even though it would still be dark out for several more hours. Upon hearing them, I didn’t know whether to laugh or to curse.

Regardless of how tired I was, I would always make a brief visit to the chapel of my dorm—the Chapel of the Annunciation—which was conveniently located right off the entryway. Shuffling in and genuflecting, the stillness and silence of the space cut through the noise of my bulky winter coat, clumsy boots, and overfilled backpack. In those dark nights, the only light visible was the lit sanctuary lamp, casting bold, red warmth against the darkness.



These visits to the chapel were rarely a consolation to me on a natural level. I still felt weary and stressed out and overwrought. But there was a deeper consolation in those moments. I was receiving something supernatural. I found hope in His constancy. He was—even at that late hour—still waiting up for me to come see Him.

During Advent, as the days become shorter and often busier, I think of these moments in my dorm chapel, these brief moments of vigilance, of waiting to receive something, of hoping for a coming—for an encounter—in the midst of my anxieties.

The Presence of Christ concealed in the tabernacle, and signaled by the sanctuary lamp, is a poignant image of Advent to me. It is like the Christ in utero, hidden in the body of his mother, small, silent, unknown, yet powerful. It is the image of the Messiah Who does not swoop in to solve all my worldly problems, but rather makes Himself known in silence and hiddenness and constancy. And Who wishes to find a home within myself as He did in Mary.

He shows us the power of weakness and vulnerability and smallness. He reveals the richness in poverty, the beauty in simpleness, the fullness in self-emptying. The God of all the Universe comes in the form of a tiny wafer, hidden in a box. And before that, as a tiny child, hidden in the womb of His mother.

Caryll Houselander beautifully writes, “The psalmists had hymned Christ’s coming on harps of gold. The prophets had foretold it with burning tongues. But now the loudest telling of His presence on earth was to be the heartbeat within the heartbeat of a child.” What was asked of Mary was her humanity, which gave Christ His humanity. Bones, blood, cartilage, skin, all organizing themselves (literally) within her, a vital, mysterious, silent, life-giving force.

Christ comes to us in the Eucharist, small, silent, vulnerable, and asks the same of us as He asked of Mary—he asks for our humanity. He requires our fiat in order to give Him shape and form in the world. “We are all asked if we will surrender what we are, our humanity, our flesh and blood, to the Holy Spirit and allow Christ to fill the emptiness formed by the particular shape of our life” (Houselander). He desires to come into the secret of our hearts to teach us wisdom, a wisdom that is foolishness in the eyes of a world that always has more for us to do or worry about. It is the wisdom of smallness, of silence. It is the wisdom of a power not our own.

“In the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.” - Luke 1:78