I learned from a family with young children recently that when trophies are given for a sporting event, all the children receive one.

It’s a warped sense of affirmation and religiously it’s a warped sense of Christ light in today’s gospel.

When is failure taught if not at a young age? Or, do you wait until you’re thirty in a job when your project is roundly rejected? “But I have all these trophies at home,” he says at the bar after work.

Do you remember the “Clapper.” Clap once and the light turns on. Clap again and the light turns dark.

It’s the “either/or” of our culture and it’s wrong. Like giving a trophy to everyone, there is no total light or total darkness. If it’s total darkness then where does our beautiful virtue of hope reside?
If it’s total light in your life, then you’re living in La-La-Land.

Add a dimmer to your living room lamp and you may a good, healthy religious perspective. We live in neither a land of one or the other.

Being dimwitted people, we live in the dimmer of God’s glory alongside the darkness of our choice of selfishness.

Easter’s hope for us all is always aiming for the Christ light to illuminate and clearly guide our lives. The reality of our lives is the darkness that surrounds us attempting to convince us that ease of darkness wins over struggling gift of light.

The only trophy we need is the victory of Christ’s risen destruction of death; meaning darkness. We aspire through the sacraments and our prayers for the wonderful peace the light of Christ offers us.

Now that’s something to clap about…a lot.