My custom is to wake up before dawn, get myself a cup of coffee, go sit on my patio facing the dawn and read the Office for the day. These are moments of peace and calm for me, while I listen to the birds singing in the trees, the sounds of early morning in the delta, and hear in my soul the beauty that God wants to reveal to me before I set out about the many activities that consume a good portion of my day.
These morning meditations remind about how right it is that the Church should be called a “dawn” for the world. As the world is led from the night of disbelief into the light of faith, it is opened to the splendor of heavenly brightness just as the dawn bursts into day after darkness. How right are the words of the Song of Songs: Who is she who is coming up like the dawn? (Song of Songs 6:10). The holy Church seeks the rewards of heavenly life and is rightly called the dawn because it deserts the shadows of sin and sparkles in the light of righteousness.
There is something subtler to learn from this, considering the nature of the dawn. Dawn, or first light, proclaims that the night is over but does not yet manifest the full brightness of the day. It dispels the night, it gives a beginning to the day, but still, it is a mixture of light and darkness. All of us who follow the truth in this life, are we not exactly like the dawn? Some of the things we do are truly works of the light, but others are not entirely free of the remnants of darkness. “There is not a righteous man on earth, who always does what is right and never sins” (Ecclesiastes 7:20).
This is why Paul does not say “the night has passed, and day has come,” rather he says, “night has passed and day is approaching,” (Romans 13:12) showing beyond doubt that he is still in the dawn, after the end of darkness but still before the rising of the sun.
The Church is not yet perfect. The Church will be fully day only when the darkness of sin is no longer mixed in with it. It will be fully day only when it shines with the perfect warmth of a light that comes from within. God shows that we are still going through this dawn when he says to Job, “Have you ever sent the dawn to its post?” (Job 38:12) Something that is being sent somewhere is being sent from one place or state to another. What is the destined place of the dawn if not the perfect brightness of the eternal vision? And when it has reached its place, will it still have any of the darkness of the night that has passed? The dawn was intent on reaching its destined place when the psalmist said, “My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I appear before the face of God?” (Psalms 42:2-4) The dawn was hurrying to the place it knew to be its destiny when Paul said that he wanted to die and to be with Christ, and when he said, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:22)
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!