“Lux fiat”. According to Genesis this was God’s command on the first day of creation when he said: “Let there be light”. He saw that it was good. But it wasn’t until the fourth day that God created the sun. Hence, we have the mystery which has engaged the imaginations of biblical scholars for millennia: if God created the sun on the fourth day, what was the ‘light’ that his ‘lux fiat’ brought into existence on the first? Was this the Big Bang? Could it be the creation of the angels, those luminous beings? Was it some sidereal phenomenon preliminary to the birth of the galaxies?
Or, does the word God spoke in his ‘lux fiat’ relate to the Word in the Prologue to John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him, and that life was the light of men, a light that shines in the dark, a light that darkness could never overpower”.
Certainly, the inspiring imagery of light appears throughout scripture. The reading from the prophet Isaiah on the feast of the Epiphany this week includes: “Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord rises upon you. See, darkness covers the earth and thick darkness is over the peoples, but the Lord rises upon you and his glory appears over you. Nations will come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn”. Psalm 139 addresses the Lord: “Even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you”. In John’s Gospel Jesus says: “I am the light of the world. Whosever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (Jn. 8:12). In Matthew’s Gospel, he says: ‘Let your light shine before men; that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven” (Mt 5.14) Clearly, the light to which these citations refer is not sunshine or moonglow.
Readers who reflect on these biblical references to light will have different interpretations of their significance. Clearly, our day-to-day experience with ‘natural’ light already acquaints us with the benevolent power sunlight can have on us. How much more, then, might this ‘super-natural’ light signify?
One interpretation of this light brought into being by God’s ‘lux fiat’ is that it is the release of God’s creative power, or the manifestation of divine inspiration. From where else does our inspiration come other than from the Word through which ‘all things come to be’? Since the dawn of creation when the breath of God ‘inspired’ in us our God-like nature, this divine inspiration has infused in us the ability to discern, to create, to act, and – as the Bible puts it – to shine in the dark.
This is the light, I would contend, that inspires donors such as ours to pursue philanthropy. These individuals respond to the darkness of hopeless poverty – material and spiritual – which they encounter here and abroad, by declaring their own ‘lux fiat’. As they share with the world their own light of charity, they extend to others that divine inspiration that overpowers the darkness of despair.
Illumined by the mysterious inspiration of this light, the Kingdom advances.