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There’s a great Catholic writer, whom I love, named Flannery O’Connor. She lived in the South, and was a Catholic. Now, they gave Flannery O’Connor the National Book Award. So, it wasn’t just we Catholics who thought she was a great writer. The whole country did. And Flannery O’Connor said once, “When people are spiritually deaf, you have to speak very clearly. And when they are almost deaf, you have to shout!” .... When they are spiritually deaf, you have to shout sometimes. She felt that we were surrounded by a lot of spiritually deaf people, in our culture.

Now, in today’s gospel, John the Baptist is shouting, “Repent!” He must have been a scarey character. “Repent!” And then he says, “Somebody’s coming. Get ready!” When Our Lord appears, John says, “There He is, the Light of the World.” But he is shouting today, pointing Christ out, trying to point Christ out, “Get ready.” Now, Our Lord said, “I am the LIght of the World.” You have heard that since you were little kids, that Christ said that about himself, “I am the Light of the World.” We have heard it so often. But if somebody came along and said that, back then, you would either have to say, “OK, he is God. He is the Messiah. He is the Lord,” or “He escaped from the Mental Ward.” You’d have to. You can’t just patronize Jesus, pat Him on the head, “lovely, lovely Jesus.” Mad as a hatter, or exactly what He said, “I am the Light of the World.”

Now, the theme of this parish, for advent, is “Darkness, Light and Christ in our midst.” It’s a good theme. This morning, with you, for a few minutes, I want to talk with you about light. Christ is the Light of the World. (And, if He isn’t, He is a dangerous lunatic.) Flannery O’Connor, who lived in my lifetime and in some of your lifetimes, great Catholic writer who died very young at age 39, kept saying “You got to shout for some people. They are spiritually deaf.” She talked about two groups who are spiritually deaf. (well, twelve really.... But today we will take just two.) They are very nice people but..... The first group she talks about are the “Sophisticated Sneerers” who surround us in our culture. “Sophisticated Sneerers” are very nice, but when it comes to Christ and His word and the Light of the World.... Oh, my dear! She talks about groups that she met, up in New York, where she was studying and writing. “Abortion? ... It’s just a bunch of cells. War? Well it’s necessary to relieve the surplus population and it gets rid of a good deal of masculine aggression. The poor? Well, the poor, if they would just pull up their bootstraps and do something about it.” She would hear these things over and over, as probably we still do one way or another. How do you point Christ out to those people?

She was at a cocktail party once, way back in the forties, and when somebody said that, “Well, they are just a bunch of cells!” she looked around and said, “Well, so are we!” Some clinician, some cold-eyed objectivist could say “Well you are all just a bunch of cells. You have college degrees and you wear shoes and pants, but....” Christ, the Light of the World says, “I came that you might have life, and have it more abundantly.” .... Yeah! Yeah! We heard that! .... But listen!! “I came that you might have Life .” (He’s either crazy or He is God.) “Have life more abundantly” from the moment you are conceived to the last gasp, and then have life forever.

About war, Christ says to Peter, the night he is arrested, when Peter rips out his sword, “Put away the sword. He who takes up the sword will perish by the sword.” That’s Christ.

And about the poor, Chist says over and over, “You give a cup of cold water to someone who needs a cup of cold water, you are doing it for me.” .... He’s looney or He’s the Lord.

And for the spiritually deaf, Flannery O’Connor said, “You gotta shout. Maybe they will hear you.” Point Christ out. Some will hear you.

And of the twelve, the other group I want to talk about, because I have met so many of them, are the “Artistic Nihilists.” You know what “nihilist” means .... nothing. The Artistic Nihilists (Since she was a writer she had run into them, and since I was a teacher I had to run into them.) are part of our culture, where nothing means anything. It’s a kind of despair, a kind of haughty despair. I would bring kids down to the museum in New York, contemporary art. College kids were there too, behind us, and there was this big painting that took up half that wall. It was a big purple blot. And there were a couple of college kids, a guy trying to impress his girlfriend, I think. She said, “Ah! .... What does it mean?” (big purple blot) and he took off his glasses, “Mean?.... hah-hah-hah..... Are you looking for meaning? What does meaning mean? It means nothing.... like life.” And she said, “Ahh.... Oh!” (I don’t know why she thought she had to pretend to have the brain of a pancake in order to impress him.) I would bring kids because it was the culture. I would bring kids in college down to see the Nihilist plays. They are still playing on and off Broadway. This was a big set and it was tilted. It was supposed to be a house, but it wasn’t a house because “house” doesn’t mean anything. And the girl was there and the guy was here and there was a table with a glass of water. This went for three hours. And the girl said, “That is a glass,” and he said, “of water.” And she said, “Water is what it is.” And he said, “a glass of.” Again, college kids behind me and the college guy, “..... W-O-W!!.... D-E-E-P!” I hope you don’t think I am a kind of Philistine who is sneering at contemporary literature and art, but after a while if being means nothing, how can you start talking about light, about the historicity of the gospels, the validity of Jesus’ existence, historical and psychological proofs He rose from the dead, with people who say, “Oh! Meaning means nothing?” It’s part of the culture Flannery O’Connor said “we breathe in.” And how can you talk about light to people who are perfectly content to stay in a kind of blissful dark? And Christ says, He’s on trial for His life (Remember?), and He says to Pilate, “I am the way, the truth and the light. I am the truth. It is for telling the truth that I came to this planet. And those who hear the truth, they listen to My voice.” It is awfully essential or it is just blather.

Now, to conclude, in my experience of forty-four years as a priest, the only thing that seems to break through, where you can point Christ out (This is just one man’s experience.), the only thing that gets the deaf, Sophisticated Sneerers and Nihilists and all, is pain. The only thing that gets through, it seems, is pain. They are looking for light.

Two examples I told you about five years ago. (But I think maybe some people moved!) The first is Alfred Hitchcock. You know the great director who tries to scare us in his movies, such as Psycho and The Birds. When he was a little kid he was brought up by the Jesuits, very strict, first-rate Catholic education. Even when he was a little kid he was very pudgy. He did something naughty one day when he was about eight. And his father gave him an envelope and he said, “Alf, you bring this envelope to the policeman around the corner.” It was getting dark and cold, like this morning. Hitchcock set out and he went to the policeman around the corner. The policeman opened the envelope and he read the envelope and he took the envelope and he took little Hitchcock by the hand and he led him down the spiral staircase to the bottom of the jail and led him down the corridor and put him into a dark cell and locked him in and went upstairs and turned off all the lights. Now, Hitchcock was very precocious, very smart. He had absorbed three intensive years of first-rate Jesuit Catholic education. And he began to spin in the cell. He began to spin in the cell.If you see a lot of Hitchcock movies, there is usually a scene where an individual is locked in a tight space and spinning around. The only thing Hitchcock could do in the dark was grab ahold of his rosary and he did. A little kid, he held onto the cross. He said, “I must have been there forever.” Five minutes, and then the lights came on again and the jailer came down the spiral staircase and opened the cell and ushered him out onto the dark London streets, where he could get home, into the light. Hitchcock said, “I had absorbed all the things that the Catholic Church could teach by the age of eight.” He could. He was very smart. And it was only then in that terrible pain and fear that I understood innocent people suffer, there is darkness and it is great to get back into the light, and I understood redemption.” He was an old man on the BBC but he said “I understood then redemption”.... pain!

The other one is the lady I told you about, college girl, twelve years of first-rate Catholic education, but she was kind of complacent, ho-hum, what’s next, bored and I heard all of that. she had massive surgery, and I went to visit her. She sat bolt upright in the bed and said, “I am SO glad that we have a God who had flesh and blood and bones and knew what pain was!” She was back. She was back to Christ and the Sacraments. I don’t wish that kind of pain on any of us, but sometimes it is the only way that we can hear and see.

Anyhow, every Advent, you and I have to listen to John the Baptist shout, trying to point Christ out. Keep shouting, John!