Spark into Flame: A Holy Week Meditation

When I was a child, I thought as a child,

I reasoned as a child (1 Corinthians 13:11).

Time lingered like golden light at dusk,

And the world seemed wrapped in a gentle radiance—

Long days resting in the shelter of family and home.

There was an innocence then,

A quiet awareness of warmth within,

Though I did not yet have words to name it.

When I became a youth,

I turned outward.

I sought to be like others,

Measuring myself against the shifting mirrors of the world.

For “all that is in the world—

the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life—

is not from the Father” (1 John 2:16).

Yet I did not know this.

I walked toward distant lights,

Mistaking flickers for fire.

By early adulthood, I was immersed

In the customs and currents of the age—

Tasting love, and loss, and betrayal.

No philosophy could soothe

The restless ache within my soul.

Like the Preacher of Ecclesiastes,

I found that much of what I grasped was “vanity and a chasing after wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).

I built for myself an ivory tower of ideas—

Isms and arguments,

Constructs of intellect stacked high against heaven.

Yet even there, I searched for identity.

“Who am I?” echoed within chambers of thought

That could not answer the cry of the heart.

Only after years of seeking and falling,

Of Good Fridays endured in silence,

Did I begin to understand:

The Light was never absent.

It was not extinguished—

Only buried beneath layers of illusion,

Covered by false beliefs

Born of a material world that passes away (1 Corinthians 7:31).

Truth did not dwell in abstraction,

But in the Spirit breathed into me from the beginning—

“The LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground,

and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life” (Genesis 2:7).

I had sought false gods—

Success, approval, knowledge, desire—

Yet none were the living God.

None could say,

“I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).

Holy Week teaches me this mystery:

The spark becomes flame only through surrender.

Through betrayal and abandonment.

Through the Cross.

Through the silence of the tomb.

For unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,

It remains alone (John 12:24).

The Light I knew as a child—

Soft, unguarded, pure—

Was not lost with age.

It awaited resurrection.

In the Vigil night, when darkness is deepest,

A single flame is kindled.

The Paschal candle pierces the void,

And the Church sings,

“May the light of Christ rising in glory

dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”

So too within me—

The spark becomes Paschal fire.

Not my own brilliance,

But Christ alive within (Galatians 2:20).

The better self I sought to construct

Is not forged by effort alone,

But revealed in surrender.

The dwelling of God is not an ivory tower,

But a humble hut of the heart—

“The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).

And this same flame,

Burning with love and mercy,

Reaches outward—

Not to dominate,

But to illumine.

For what is received as grace

Must be given as light (Matthew 5:16).

The child’s spark

Has become the Paschal flame.

And in that fire—

I am made new.

©️rejoiceandpraise.ca

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God Bless 🙏❤️