Jun 29 Mon
Is the dark night of frustration the end?
Pope Leo explains: Nicodemus went to talk to Jesus at night. Like him, we too are pilgrims in the night, on our journey of life.
We are beggars for love; we are truly hungry and thirsty. We seek a deeper meaning that will sustain us, inspire us, and help us understand the mystery of our lives.
As we slowly move forward, one small step at a time, we are called to engage with the shadows of our own human condition: we lack the full truth; we do not fully fathom the mystery of ourselves or the true identity of others; we do not always succeed in understanding the hidden truth of the reality that surrounds us and the events unfolding before our eyes.
We seek a light to illumine the path.
But Nicodemus also speaks to us about the path of faith. It is not a path that runs separately, parallel to that of our human existence. Rather, these two paths are always intertwined.
Jesus is always with the Father and with us. Thus, every time the mystery of our life unfolds in the light of a new day, in all that we are and do, we are in God’s presence and held in his eternal embrace: our life “is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).
Yet, at times we experience the night of faith, the weariness of believing, the fatigue of the spirit, a sense of inadequacy in the face of the Gospel’s call, the bitterness of our failures, and the fear of not measuring up.
Nicodemus teaches us that these nights — which accompany our lives, our journey of faith, and the history in which we live — are a time of blessing, a place for rebirth.
These nights strip us bare and return us to what is essential. They remove the human and religious masks we wear by day to keep ourselves from being recognized or to present ourselves differently than we are.
They expose us, revealing our lights and our shadows. These nights restore us to the humility of knowing how to look at ourselves in truth, beyond the presumption of thinking that our journey is already complete and that we can move forward as if we had a clear understanding of everything, everyone, and even God.
Suffering or dissatisfaction, or disillusionment or unbelief, can be an opportunity to receive new life, to change and be renewed, to be “born again from above,” as Jesus tells Nicodemus. In fact, God did not come to judge the world in its sin and the night of its unfaithfulness, but sent his Son to save it, to give the world eternal life.
For this reason, we too are called not to judge the “nights” — neither the nights of our own lives, those of the Church, nor those of the society around us.
In the night, we must instead set out on a journey as Nicodemus did, opening ourselves to the wind of the Spirit. We must welcome the night no longer as a sign of failure, but as the beginning of a new life.