Main news for 8 July 2018

Zechariah, one of those "waiting for the consolation of Israel," that very consolation connected with the coming of the Messiah, says that the coming Messiah must, among other things, "give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, guiding us onto the path of peace." Here before us appears the image of the Messiah as enlightener, enlightener in the most literal sense of the word. In later centuries, "enlightenment" often meant something entirely different: knowledge of the world and the human person, a correct worldview, in short, something connected in one way or another with the intellectual sphere. And it was supposed that the more a person knows, the more correctly he will live and the happier he will become. Zechariah, however, speaks of enlightenment in the most literal, spiritual sense of the word.

He has in mind that light of God's presence about which believing Yahwists of his time and of previous epochs knew quite well, because this Presence as light had been revealed to them already in the days of Moses. It was such light that was now to enlighten people. And the world too: the Kingdom was to enter the world, and the world was to become the Kingdom, which is all permeated with light. With the same light with which the world was permeated on the first day of creation and which later grew dim because of the evil and sin that entered the world. The darkness of which Zechariah speaks is not physical; this darkness appears where there is no place for God's presence. After the fall the whole world found itself in the shadow of death, which took it captive.

And now the time comes when the Messiah's coming will leave no place for darkness in the world, will free it from captivity, making the world part of the Kingdom and restoring its fullness. And peace is what is given to a person in the Kingdom. Here the matter is not only peace between people who stop being hostile to one another; it is also peace with God, and this is already a new reality for fallen man: God's presence opening to him from within as part of his own inner life. Peace is the same Kingdom, but within, in the heart. Peace within and light without: this is how the Kingdom entering the world together with the Messiah is opened to Zechariah.