Even after Bondi, a light of hope shines through the darkness
National Post, 21 December 2025
Jews this week again feel burned. In these days, gentiles who extend a hand to share those burdens can be a tiny flame of light
Judaism is a Mediterranean religion — thus too is Christianity — but we forget that Mediterranean means northern hemisphere. Hanukkah’s candles are lit in the darkest days of the year, just as Christ’s birth is marked just as the days begin to get longer. Lights come into the world when the darkness is darkest.
December though Down Under is summertime. Families go to the beach at Christmastime, as Jews in Sydney were at Bondi Beach for Hannukah. The resonance of seasonal observances differs if the lights come when the days are longest and the sun shines brightest. This year the darkness did come in December. Man can always bring the darkness.
Catholics have something similar to lighting the menorah on successive days. Our Advent wreaths have four candles, which we light successively on the four Sundays before Christmas. There are not fixed prayers for the Advent wreath, and this year I misplaced the ones I had used for years. New ones had to be composed.
My memory reached back to something St. John Paul the Great said when he visited Toronto in 2002 for World Youth Day. The theme that year included words from the Sermon on the Mount: “You are the light of the world.”
“Even a tiny flame lifts the heavy lid of night,” the Holy Father said. I thought that fitting for lighting the Advent candles amidst this year’s December darkness.
“You are young, and the Pope is old,” John Paul added in an autobiographical reflection. “Although I have lived through much darkness, under harsh totalitarian regimes, I have seen enough evidence to be unshakably convinced that no difficulty, no fear is so great that it can completely suffocate the hope that springs eternal in the hearts of the young.”
Events are such as to often shake that conviction. At Christmas Mass, the magnificent prologue of St. John’s gospel is read: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
It is not for lack of trying that the darkness does not prevail. The Polish pope lived much of his life under regimes that daily marshalled the formidable forces of darkness. But a shadowy regime is not necessary. In Sydney, as the menorah was being lit, on a bright summer evening, the darkness was brought by a father and his son.
To the young people in Toronto the Holy Father quoted Isaiah: “loose the bonds of injustice … share your bread with the hungry … remove the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil…. Then your light shall rise in the darkness” (cf. Isaiah 58:6-10).
Even as a tiny flame lifts the heavy lid of night, so too the witness of a single soul shines in the darkness. As with a person, so too with a people.
For Jews, Isaiah foretells their mysterious vocation, a tiny people entrusted with a mission for the entire world: “It is too small a thing that you should be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6).
That witness is costly. Candles are used in worship to teach us that light requires sacrifice. The flame lasts only as long as the wax, the oil, gives of itself. The miracle of Hanukkah was that a single jar of oil was sufficient to keep the menorah lit for eight days. Our eyes are drawn to the flickering flames, but the miracle is also one of continuous sacrifice, beyond the usual limits. Hanukkah is described as a festival of lights, but it is also one of costly sacrifice, of the oil that gives more than can be reasonably expected.
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