Home 
Mahatma Gandhi loved the hymn, ?Lead, kindly Light.? Every Friday evening, at seven o'clock, he had it sung in his ashram. For him it stood for satyagraha, his philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance.
John Henry Newman wrote the hymn on his voyage back to England after traveling in Italy as a young priest. He fell ill and when he recovered he yearned for home so deeply that his attendant found him sobbing. ?At last I got off in an orange boat, bound for Marseilles,? he wrote. In the Straits of Bonifacio, for lack of wind the boat went stock-still for a week. ?It was there that I wrote the lines, ?Lead, Kindly Light,? which have since become so well known.?
I pick the prayer as among my top choices. The Liturgy of the Hours includes it as alternative hymn for Night Prayer on Friday. I never fail to choose it, and wish that I could sing it too.
It has three stanzas. The first reads: ?Lead, kindly Light, amid th?encircling gloom, / lead Thou me on! / The night is dark, and I am far from home; / lead Thou me on! /
Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see / The distant scene; one step enough for me.?
Carol Zaleski, a professor of world religions, credits the hymn?s attraction to its power of conveying a sense of assurance in the face of mystery. Inspired by it, one can say: ?I don't need to see everything in the future. I just need enough light to take the next step.?
I find it a fitting response to Christ?s invitation to ?put out into deep water? ? a call he originally made to his disciples, which for me he somehow continues to make to each of us.
Luke narrates that, after he finished preaching to the crowd while seated in a boat, Jesus said to Peter, "Put out into deep water and lower your nets for a catch."
At first Peter complained ? they had worked hard all night and had caught nothing. Still, he said, ?At your command I will lower the nets."
Luke writes that when they had done this, they caught such a great number of fish that their nets were tearing apart, and the two boats that carried the catch all but sank from the load.
When Peter saw this, he fell at the knees of Jesus and said, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."
The call to ?put out into deep water? is a call to, in the words of St. Benedicta of the Cross, entrust the future into the hands of the Lord and be led by Him like a child. Very often this goes against one?s better judgment, because one relies on the certainty born of experience, and wants to be in control.
A recent event brought home to me the relevance of Luke?s account. It happened to a friend, who has aspired for promotion. This he can get only after a panel has interviewed him and included his name in a list submitted by the panel to the head who will pick from the list. One day he received notice of the date of his interview. After countless interviews and for no less than five times having his name in the shortlist submitted to the appointing power to no avail, he did not feel like going, not to mention that this would cost him a fair amount of travel expenses.
But one morning he opened the New Testament to have something to mull on while taking a walk. His eyes fell on the passage from Luke, and immediately he realized that the message was for him ? that despite the many times he had tried and ?caught nothing? he still should ?put out into deep water.? A still, small voice told him that this was the Lord?s call, an invitation for him to believe.
Humanly speaking, the friend could not see how he would get the appointment this time, with so many jockeying for the position, a number of them backed up by people of influence. But he recalled Newman?s words ? ?Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see / The distant scene; one step enough for me.?
And so he decided to go, and prayed ? Just give me enough light to take the next step, Lord. For me that would be all.
