In the Epistle of St. John we read: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. Then in the gospel of Matthew we read of darkness triumphant with the slaughter of the Innocents in Bethlehem. Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be consoled, since they were no more. Whenever we see innocent suffering — a loved one dying from cancer, a child killed by a bomb trageting civilians, a wife being abused — we wonder about the light of God. Couldn’t a God who is all powerful have prevented this? The scandal of the incarnation, that God would share humanity with us, is precisely that it is not power which matters most. The most important thing is love and no matter what the darkness is doing, it cannot overcome the light of love.
