When I was attending mass today in light of Easter, I saw a beautiful symbolic gesture, where a fire taken from a single brazier with a candle is spread across the room, each person offering up their candle to light up another’s. The whole cathedral was dark in the beginning, but as more candles were lit up, the brighter the hall became. And in the end, everything was bathed in a warm comforting light. Hundreds of points of light that originally came from one singular spark. 

That’s inspiring to me because it reminds me of our duty in this world. We each carry a flame within ourselves, a burning desire to make the world a better place, our own personal mission to carry out in life. It is our duty to never let this flame go out, make sure it shines bright with everything you do, so that others can carry the torch when you’re gone. We’ve inherited a lot of problems from our predecessors, seemingly insurmountable obstacles that we need to learn how to surpass, but along with all the bad, they’ve also passed down their own fire. Hope, that we’ll find a way through the darkness in the end.

A single candle won’t do much to brighten a room, but as a point of light it stands out, we all in the dark can see it, reach out towards it. Like a singular candle in a dark room, an inspirational act can be a beacon of hope for everyone stumbling around in the dark, eventually spreading its fire to everyone else. And with it comes real change, because only together can we stop the coming darkness. Only when every single one of us lights our own candle to fight against the dark, can we light up the world.