Walking By Light

On John 1:5.

As we approach the darkest time of the year in the form of the winter solstice, one passage from the Gospels is especially relevant: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” - John 1:5¹

K. Mitch Hodge via Unsplash

A group of mothers from my parish has met for a Bible study for the past two years. This year, we are studying the Gospel of John. The best descriptor for this Gospel is “luminous,” I think, as in the luminous mysteries of the rosary. The poetic cadence of John’s writing distinguishes it from the Synoptic Gospels. This may be why the Gospel of John tends to be the most recognizable even to the nonreligious, with John 3:16² likely being the best-known Bible verse.

During this Bible study, a friend shared that her Douay - Rheims Bible translates John 1:5 as: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it.”³ I love the original translation, but this interpretation is fascinating. Those of us who have converted know that while those that walk in light can understand darkness, the reverse is not true. I think this is why Wendell Berry advises his audience in Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front:⁴

“[E]very day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.”

Those walking in darkness cannot comprehend behavior motivated by love. Only those who walk in light can understand the desire to serve, to forgive, and to hope while receiving nothing in return.

We may not always do these things perfectly, but the best goals we can set for ourselves as the Holiday season approaches is to focus on love. Love is the quiddity of the Advent season, the force that crowns the darkening skies and shorter days. Love, incarnated through Jesus’s birth, shines like a light through even the bleakest darkness.

In many ways, Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor⁵ is a parable about John 1:5. The Grand Inquisitor is Dostoevsky’s answer to the “Problem of Evil,” an attempted answer to the “why” of underserved suffering. This chapter is why I fell in love with Dostoevsky’s writings. When I embraced Christianity at twenty-three, I needed to understand why God allows suffering. Dostoevsky provided an answer.

“The Grand Inquisitor” is about a member of the clergy excoriating Jesus for His commandments and for the state of the world that He left behind. Jesus responds by kissing the official, the titular Grand Inquisitor, on the cheek, in a gesture of infinite love and patience. Dostoevsky understood that logical arguments aren’t enough to counter the problem of evil. This man had faced death before a firing squad before his life was spared at the last instant, receiving the ultimate second chance at life.⁶ He knew that we must accept the resonant truth of the light that outshines the darkness.

In some moments 2025 has felt like a year of unquenchable darkness for me and my family. In other ways it has been resplendent. The lights of faith, love, and friendship have illuminated my life, and I am grateful.

The Gospel of John tells us: “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.”⁷

As the winter solstice draws near, I pray that we will all walk in the light.

1. RSV-CE.

2. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (RSV-CE).

3. My RSV-CE does provide this as an alternative translation in a footnote.

4. Wendell Berry, Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, The University of Arizona, (original text from 1973, republished 2012), https://cales.arizona.edu/~steidl/Liberation.html.

5. Dostoevsky, “The Grand Inquisitor” (from The Brothers Karamazov, Part II, Book 5, Chapter 5).

6. Herman Bernstein, “DOSTOYEVSKY, AT THE GATES OF DEATH; A Letter Written by the Russian Novelist Just After a Reprieve at the Very Place of Execution,” The New York Times, (4 May 1924), https://www.nytimes.com/1924/05/04/archives/dostoyevsky-at-the-gates-of-death-a-letter-written-by-the-russian.html.

7. John 3:19, RSV-CE.