As we approach the Holy Day of the Lights

St. Gregory of Nazianzus has an oration (#39) on Theophany also known as the Day of Holy Lights, so called because baptism is Holy Illumination. God illumined creation, His baptism affected all, and so the catechumens, who in the ancient church held torches or candles on the day, were baptized. I would publish the whole thing, but it is quite long and I fear no one would read it (online here) if I did. The below selections are both a challenge and ebulliently victorious in their tone:

II. Therefore listen to the Voice of God, which sounds so exceeding clearly to me, who am both disciple and master of these mysteries, as would to God it may sound to you; I Am The Light Of The World. Therefore approach ye to Him and be enlightened, and let not your faces be ashamed, being signed with the true Light. It is a season of new birth, let us be born again. It is a time of reformation, let us receive again the first Adam. Let us not remain what we are, but let us become what we once were. The Light Shines In Darkness, in this life and in the flesh, and is chased by the darkness, but is not overtaken by it:— I mean the adverse power leaping up in its shamelessness against the visible Adam, but encountering God and being defeated—in order that we, putting away the darkness, may draw near to the Light, and may then become perfect Light, the children of perfect Light. See the grace of this Day; see the power of this mystery. Are you not lifted up from the earth? Are you not clearly placed on high, being exalted by our voice and meditation? And you will be placed much higher when the Word shall have prospered the course of my words.

XX. But let us venerate today the Baptism of Christ; and let us keep the feast well, not in pampering the belly, but rejoicing in spirit. And how shall we luxuriate? "Wash you, make you clean." If you be scarlet with sin and less bloody, be made white as snow; if you be red, and men bathed in blood, yet be ye brought to the whiteness of wool. Anyhow be purified, and you shall be clean (for God rejoices in nothing so much as in the amendment and salvation of man, on whose behalf is every discourse and every Sacrament), that you may be like lights in the world, a quickening force to all other men; that you may stand as perfect lights beside That great Light, and may learn the mystery of the illumination of Heaven, enlightened by the Trinity more purely and clearly, of Which even now you are receiving in a measure the One Ray from the One Godhead in Christ Jesus our Lord; to Whom be the glory and the might for ever and ever. Amen.