Exploring Christian Enlightenment: The Insights of St. John of Kronstadt

This Sunday is called the Sunday After Illumination, or a Sunday on which we mustn’t be involved in any usual, mundane, or earthly affairs, but rather work on the salvation of our soul; after Illumination, that is, after the Baptism of the Lord, which was and is called Illumination because through Baptism God gives spiritual light to our souls, the light of knowledge of God and piety, which is signified by the lampadas or wax candles lit at the font and the candles burning in the hands of the Godparents.

This spiritual, incorrupt, eternal light communicated to our souls is Christ our God Himself, the true Light that enlightens every man that comes into the world. Spiritual darkness is sin—the culprit and author of sin is the prince of darkness, the devil, who darkens and seduces mankind with sin, teaches every sin, and draws man to eternal destruction.

In accordance with the meaning of this Sunday, the Gospel read at Liturgy is about the coming of Jesus Christ from the city of Nazareth, where He lived and was raised, to pagan Galilee, to people who were sitting in darkness and the shadow of death, and about their enlightenment, as foretold by the Prophet Isaiah 700 years before the coming of Christ into the world, saying: The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up (Mt. 4:15-16, Is. 9:1-2). Since spiritual enlightenment comes through sincere repentance of our sins, which are truly eternal darkness and eternal torment, the Lord Who settled in this land of darkness and the shadow of death began to preach, saying: Repent: for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand (Mt. 4:17).

Thus, true repentance drives away the sinful darkness, sin, and the author of sin—the devil—who lives and reigns in the hearts of sinners. And it establishes the Kingdom of Heaven in the hearts of believers and penitents—the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, the Kingdom of Christ.

This is the content and meaning of today’s Gospel. It speaks about our spiritual illumination, about repentance of sins, about how, with the coming of Christ God to earth, the Kingdom of Heaven is close to us now—the kingdom of grace, which is the His Church; this kingdom of grace on earth, in which we’re given all Divine power for life and piety (2 Pet. 1:3). Therefore, today’s word should be about Christian enlightenment. Are we all enlightened Christians? Do we all live in constant, sincere repentance, like eternal sinners who are subject to God’s judgment, or do we add sins to sins? Do we diligently try to do the good deeds for which we were created, or are we vain and petty, chasing after the dreams of our heart?

I’ve asked myself and you these questions in order to show that true Christian enlightenment consists in knowing yourself, or in knowing who we are and what our purpose is, what we were in the beginning when we were created by God, what we became after sin, and what we absolutely must become. Further, true Christian enlightenment consists of sincere and active repentance and not empty, formal, and false confession, which many of us perform perfunctorily every year on the appointed days, unaccompanied by the fruits of repentance—which are an amended life, works of righteousness, mercy, temperance, purity and holiness, and zealous striving for Christian perfection, according to Scripture: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father Which is in Heaven is perfect (Mt. 5:48).

Further, to show that true Christian enlightenment consists not solely in education or the study of various sciences concerning the earth and what’s on earth, or the heavens and celestial mechanics, and not even in the study of Christian theology proper. Because you can be both educated and a theologian yet not have true enlightenment in your soul. You can even be, as happens in practice, completely darkened by the passions. Christian enlightenment consists in the illumination of the eyes of the heart by the light of the Gospel of Christ; in distancing ourselves, with the help of the grace of Christ through repentance and prayer, from all the darkness of the passions; from guile, unbelief, self-love, conceit, malice, pride, anger, hatred, envy, condemnation of others, cruelty and greed; from idleness and vanity, or from the pernicious art of whiling away and killing time, in gambling and various spectacles like theaters and circuses, for example; from unrighteousness and covetousness; from an impure adulterous life; from reading empty books, which may contain a clever yarn, wordplay, and masterly language, but in their essence contain no edification and leave only regret over the time wasted on them.

Thus, Christian enlightenment, beloved brothers and sisters, consists in sincere faith in Christ, in self-knowledge, in sincere repentance and separation from evil, and in the constant pursuit of Christian virtue and perfection for the sake of eternal blessedness in and with God.

If you’ve come to know that you’re dust and ashes, that you’re the stench of sin, that you’re a sinner who’s always deserving of God’s punishment; if you’re gentle and simple-hearted, meek, humble in heart, peaceful and peace-loving, patient and self-denying; if you love the truth, if you stand for it despite unrighteousness; if you’re sincerely benevolent, merciful and compassionate; if you’re temperate, pure-hearted; if you respect purity and chastity; if you hate idleness and idle amusements and study the fulfillment of the Gospel day and night—that wise, life-giving, righteous, eternal science of sciences—then you possess an incorruptible Christian enlightenment and not an illusory, worldly one that disappears like a meteor; and you’re not far from the Kingdom of God, or the Kingdom of God is already within you (Lk. 17:21). May God grant that we attain this one day.

Amen.