Fr Matthew Reese

“You will do well to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”
—2 Peter 1:19

Dear Friends in Christ,

As I was leaving after service on Sunday, I had a lovely chat with a visitor about a little painting, hidden away in an Oxford college chapel.

The piece in question was William Holman Hunt’s magnificent pre-Raphaelite canvas, The Light of the World (1853). While people may be more familiar with the enormous copy—also by the painter—which exists in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, the original is a small thing, tucked away in a little, inconspicuous side chapel in Keble College.

It is dawn. Jesus, holding a lantern, his head illumined not just by a halo, but by the pale morning light off the horizon, stands at the garden door. Above him are the faint morning stars which shone on him at Bethlehem. 

The image is somewhat ambiguous. Traditional readings of the painting are that the door represents the human soul—overgrown, unopened—and that, in reference to Revelation 3:20, it is Christ alone who can gain entrance. (“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”)

But we, the viewers, are clearly also in a doorframe, looking into the garden. We see the arches of that portal in the framing of the canvas, illuminated by Christ’s light. What does that door symbolize? And inscribed above, the words “Me non praetermisso Domine!” (“Lord, do not pass me by.”)

“You will do well,” we read this morning “to pay attention to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

We experience the Light of Christ most dramatically in the Easter Vigil, as the paschal flame comes up the length of the nave, and, in time, gives light to all in the house. But that Light is coming into the world even now… a babe in Bethlehem, illumined by the morning star. 

Where do we see that light shining in our own lives? In the world? Let us fix on it, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew