Let Light Shine

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Depictions of St. Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus, blinded by the divine light of Christ who spoke to him as he was going to arrest Christians for execution in Jerusalem.


On the contrary, we have renounced the deeds one hides for shame; we do not practice cunning or falsify the word of God, but through the open preaching of the truth we commend ourselves to anyone’s conscience in the sight of God…. it is the same God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has caused his light to shine in our hearts to spread the light of the knowledge of God’s glory in the face of Jesus Christ. (2 Cor. 4:2, 5-6)

St. Paul was accused by his enemies in Corinth of “cunning” financial business; i.e., they accused him of shady and dishonest business deals with church money. They also accused him of “cunning” ways to read the Bible that were also shady and dishonest. He tells them that he has not been involved in any “cunning” behavior–not with money and not with reading the Bible. His interpretation of Scripture is open and honest and available to anyone with an honest, open conscience.

St. Paul alludes to Genesis 1 (“Let there be light”) when he paraphrases the Father’s command, “Let light shine out of darkness.” He might also be paraphrasing the prophet Isaiah: “O people walking in darkness, behold a great light: you that dwell in the land and shadow of death, a light shall shine upon you.” (Is. 9:2) St. Paul is saying that the same light that overcame the darkness in the beginning of the world and at the destruction of Death has shone in his heart-mind and shines in the hearts-minds of all honest people.

The light of God that shines in St. Paul and in honest people reveals the truth of the Gospel. (Remember the light that shone on St. Paul at his conversion? It struck him blind in order to heal his heart, St. Augustine said.) People “see” the brightness of the Gospel and then personally adopt it and are transformed by it; they are transformed into the image of the glorious Christ and communicate it to others who are “illuminated.” (One ancient way to refer to baptism is to call it “illumination.” Old prayers for those about to be baptized asl God to bless “those preparing for holy illumination.”)

But our actual daily experience is not bright and glorious. We are wasting away and eventually die. Yet what is strong already manifests itself in what is weak and the future erupts into the present. The eternal breaks into the perishable and enlightens what is temporary and transient.

Knowing Christ as the true light, inaccessible to falsehood, we learn this, namely, that it is necessary for us to be illuminated by the rays of the true light. But virtues are the rays of the Sun of Justice streaming forth for our illumination, through which we lay aside the works of darkness and walk becomingly as in the day and we renounce those things which shame conceals. By doing all things in the light, we become the light itself so that it shines before others which is the unique quality of light. If we recognize Christ as sanctification, in whom every action is steadfast and pure, let us prove by our actions that we ourselves stand apart, being ourselves true sharers of his name, our deeds–not just our words–coinciding with his power of sanctification.

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Perfection

From Glory to Glory

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Jesus reads from the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament and begins to preach (Luke 4). Illumination in the Gladzor Gospels, a manuscript from Armenia AD 1300-1307.


Indeed, until today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. However, when one turns to the Lord the veil is taken away. Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Lord’s Spirit is, there is freedom. But all of us, with uncovered face beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as this comes from the Spirit of the Lord. (2 Cor. 3:12-18)

St. Paul tells us that a veil lies on the hearts of those who read the Old Testament without understanding that it speaks to us about Christ and points to Christ. Only by reading it in the light of Christ’s birth and life, his Death and Resurrection does the Old Testament tell us everything that God intends us to hear. Reading the Old Testament through the prism of the Gospel removes the veil from our hearts so that we can begin to grasp the full message of the words. In the Old Testament, we don’t see Christ directly but we see him reflected, “as in a mirror.”

We have to remember that a mirror in St. Paul’s day were not the silver-backed pieces of glass that clearly show us our own faces. In St. Paul’s time, a mirror was a polished piece of metal that reflected an image but the reflection was fuzzy and hazy. Sometimes it was hard for a person to really understand what they were looking at. So it is with Christ in the Old Testament: sometimes it his reflection is fuzzy and hazy. Sometimes it is hard for us to understand how we can see him in a particular Old Testament passage.

Reading the Old Testament from the perspective of the Gospel, we stand before God with naked faces–no veils!–and behold the glory of God that made Moses cover his face so that the people could look at him. Because we see the glory of God, we are being transformed into that same glory. We are always progressing from our current glorious state to an even more glorious state-of-being, suffused and saturated by the glory of God. Christian life is never-ending growth, becoming more and more like God. (When Adam and Eve were expelled from Eden, they lost their “likeness” with God but not the “image of God” in which they were made. It is the choice of each of us to recapture that “likeness.”)

The phrase “from glory to glory” is especially associated with St. Gregory of Nyssa nowadays because of the famous collection of his writings published under that title. (See it on Amazon here.) St. Gregory wrote:

Change is nothing to be afraid of. We are always changing. What is bad is if we are not changing for the better …. For this truly is perfection: never to stop growing toward what is better and never placing any limit on perfection.

Lent is coming. Lent is the time when the Church asks us to spend more time reading the Bible, including the Old Testament. In the early centuries of the Church, people coming to be baptized would be taught about Genesis, Proverbs, Isaiah in the Old Testament and the Gospel According to St. Mark and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament. (One of St. Gregory’s own, most important works is a collection of sermons on the Song of Songs in the Old Testament.) Most of the attention of the catechists (teachers) and catechumens (people wanting to be baptized) would be focused on the Old Testament. This might surprise most people today but should guide us in how much effort we put into reading which portions of the Bible.

Moses’ Shining Face

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  • The Moses Fountain in the Old City of Bern, Switzerland shows Moses with rays of light. But it was common to depict Moses with horns because in Latin, the word for “rays of light” is only one or two letters different from the word for “horns” so the Latin text of Exodus read, “Horns came from Moses’ face” rather than “Rays of light came from Moses’ face.” Whether the original translation was mistaken, or copyists simply made a mistake that got repeated, the result was the same: Moses was usually depicted in Western Christian art with horns.





The Well of Moses by Claus Sluter (a Dutch sculptor) portrays Moses with two small horns outside a monastery in Dijon. The sculpture was carved in 1395–1403.



If the ministry of death, carved with letters on stone, came into being with glory, so much so that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face which was vanishing, surely the ministry of the Spirit will be even more glorious. For if glory belongs to the ministry of condemnation, surely the ministry of righteousness abounds with even more glory! (2 Cor. 3:7-9)

St. Paul is referring to the story in Exodus about Moses and the Ten Commandments. According to the Old Testament, Moses spent 40 days atop Mt. Sinai while God carved the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. The mountaintop was hidden by thick clouds and lightning; none of the people down below could see what was happening. When Moses finally came down the mountain with the stone tablets, no one could look at him because his face was so bright. He had spent time in the presence of God and God’s glory had saturated Moses’ skin. Moses had to cover his face if the people were to be able to look at him. Eventually, the glory began to fade but …. Anytime Moses went into the Tent of Meeting to speak with God, the same thing happened: the glory of God saturated Moses’ flesh and he had to cover his face when he came out because his skin was so bright no one could look at him.

St. Paul says that if the commandments which God revealed on Mt. Sinai and throughout the time of Israel wandering in the wilderness–which had dire punishments attached to them all and only taught people what they could NOT do and condemned them because it was impossible to keep all the commandments–then the commandments of the New Testament and the gift of the Spirit (which makes the people righteous, not condemned) must be even more glorious. (Hebrews 10 points out, “A man who violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.”)

The apostles see the glory of God shining around Jesus at the Transfiguration on Mt. Tabor. In the cloud of light, they see Moses and Elijah talking with Christ. In the Acts of the Apostles, the face of St. Stephen shines with the glory of God and no one can look at him. Throughout history, saints have been seen shining with the glory of God. Sometimes, it was the disciples of the saints who were also seen shining; just as Moses spent time with God and saturated with divine glory, those who spend time with the saints who are saturated with glory, can also shine with the glory of God themselves.

There was a famous conversation between St. Seraphim of Sarov (d. 1833) and one of his disciples:

I replied: “I cannot look, Father, because your eyes are flashing like lightning. Your face has become brighter than the sun, and my eyes ache with pain.”

Father Seraphim said: “Don’t be alarmed, your Godliness! Now you yourself have become as bright as I am. You are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God yourself; otherwise you would not be able to see me as I am.”

After these words I glanced at his face and there came over me an even greater reverent awe. Imagine in the center of the sun, in the dazzling light of its midday rays, the face of a man talking to you. You see the movement of his lips and the changing expression of his eyes, you hear his voice, you feel someone holding your shoulders; yet you do not see his hands, you do not even see yourself or his figure, but only a blinding light spreading far around for several yards and illumining with its glaring sheen both the snow-blanket which covered the forest glade and the snow-flakes which besprinkled me and the great Elder. You can imagine the state I was in!

“How do you feel now?” Father Seraphim asked me.

“Extraordinarily well,” I said.

“But in what way? How exactly do you feel well?”

I answered: “I feel such calmness and peace in my soul that no words can express it.”

Righteousness and light. Divine glory. To be saturated with glory is to be filled with the Peace of God which passes understanding and this is not an experience that was limited only to ancient times or only the great saints. It is an experience that is available to anyone who honestly seeks God.

And where God’s glory and peace are found, the fragrance of his holiness is never far behind!