A Review by Oblate Elizabeth Pangerl
Consider “light” and “darkness.” What do you associate with these words? Day and night? Fullness and emptiness? Presence and absence? Shining and fading? These and other words were discussed at the beginning of the Advent retreat by Victor Klimoski at Hill-Murray High School on December 6, 2025.
Victor shared Genesis 1:1-5 and John 1:1-8 about the formation of the universe and the day and night were created. He shared a poem by Marilyn Chandler McEntyre, “When Light Comes In.” Spiritual life is about light and darkness. Light breaks when we are ready to receive it and we can ask “where is the light” in the middle of a dark moment. Victor shared a poem adapted from John O’Donohue’s “For Light”:
Light cannot see inside things.
That is what the dark is for:
Minding the interior,
Nurturing the draw of growth
Through places where death
In its own way turns into life.
In the glare of neon times,
Let our eyes not be worn
By surfaces that shine
With hunger made attractive.
When we look into the heart,
May our eyes have the kindness
And reverence of candlelight.
Both of these beautiful poems led to questions for table and self-reflection. Questions for consideration included: What ways do you mind your interior life? What sources of distraction could you manage more effectively? What unexamined assumptions about following Jesus or the spiritual life would you like to ponder this Advent? What practices of hospitality can you intensify this season? Do you have a gift that you might exercise more intentionally? What did you learn when light broke into a time of darkness? And what word will you take with you as you continue to reflect on insights gained from these questions?
Our secular world can be overwhelmingly loud and bright. There are electronic billboards advertising items we never thought we “needed” and upsetting political shenanigans that do not protect the foreigners, widows, and orphans among us. There is need all around us. How can we dispose ourselves to be light in a dark world?
