An Image from St. Ambrose

The Sun of the Everlasting Light

Early on in the life of this newsletter, I wrote an essay explaining the origins of its name: Window Light. The source is an analogy used by the 14th-century Franciscan theologian Peter Auriol, who wrote that God’s grace is like the sun and our heart like a room illumined by the sunlight coming in through a window. We cooperate with God’s grace by simply allowing this light to enter through the window of our heart, but we can also become an obstacle to grace by closing the window, keeping the light from shining in.

I also traced some of the history of the use of the sun as an image for God’s love, pointing out that some of the Church Fathers, like Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Pseudo-Dionysius had appealed to this image (and Origen even described the sun’s light coming through a window). In the Middle Ages, lesser-known theologians like Alan of Lille and John of La Rochelle further developed this analogy, applying it specifically to our reception of grace, paving the way for Auriol’s imagery. Finally, I noted that later medieval theologians like the Augustinian Thomas of Strasbourg and the Dominican Robert Holcot borrowed Auriol’s analogy to make a similar point.

As I was praying the Office of Readings (part of the Liturgy of Hours) on Thursday, I delighted to discover that the 4th-century bishop St. Ambrose of Milan had likewise used the same image, in a way quite similar to Peter Auriol centuries later. In a commentary on Psalm 118, Ambrose writes:

Throw wide the gate of your heart, stand before the sun of the everlasting light that shines on every man. This true light shines on all, but if anyone closes his window he will deprive himself of eternal light. If you shut the door of your mind, you shut out Christ.

As the line immediately before this passage makes clear, the light in this image signifies not only Christ Himself, but “the riches of simplicity, the treasures of peace, the joy of grace.” And like Auriol, Ambrose emphasizes that we can “close the window,” closing ourselves off to God’s grace.

In the section of the commentary used for the Office of Readings, Ambrose is commenting on the line, “Open the gates of righteousness; I will enter and thank the LORD. This is the LORD’s own gate, through it the righteous enter” (Ps. 118:19-20, NAB). In the passage I already cited, Ambrose mixes the analogy of sunlight in the window with that of a gate, and he also makes use of the metaphor of a door, an allusion to the third chapter of the Book of Revelation, where the heavenly Christ tells John to write to the church in Laodicea, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me” (Rev. 3:20). For example, later on Ambrose writes, “It is the soul that has its door, its gates. Christ comes to this door and knocks; he knocks at these gates. Open to him; he wants to enter, to find his bride waiting and watching.”