O Rising Sun. You are the splendour of Eternal Light and the Sun of Justice.
O come and enlighten those who sit in darkness, those who dwell in the shadows of death.

At this time of year, and today as the shortest day of the year, it is wonderful how the Church puts on our lips this antiphon where we call on the Light of Christ to come and enlighten our darkness. My prayer during this Advent season is asking for the grace to acknowledge the times when we prefer darkness before true light, as the intercessions for Week One of Advent put it.

Our 'kitchen sister' carved a very nice pumpkin head and, as you can see from the photos below, we had a lot of fun with it. But because today (November 1st) is the Feast of All Saints, I was also thinking about what Vatican II speaks of as, "the universal call to holiness". This feast is a reminder that we are all destined to become Saints, to share in the divine life of the Trinity.

While praying my Lectio Divina for the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time the words that struck me were ‘Your light will shine like the dawn and your wound quickly healed over’.

The word ‘Light’ is repeated in the first reading, the psalm and the Gospel. Elsewhere, in St John’s Gospel, Jesus tells us ‘I am the light of the world.’ Turning to us, his disciples, He reminds us in today’s Gospel we too are the ‘light of the world.’