The Needed Lamp

Cui bene facitis, attendentes, quasi lucernae lucenti in caliginoso loco... Ordo sensus est: Cui attendentes, quasi lucernae lucenti in caliginoso loco, bene facitis. In hujus etenim saeculi nocte tenebrosis tentationibus plena, ubi difficile quisquam invenitur qui non offendat, quid essemus si lucernam prophetici sermonis non haberemus? Sed nunquid lucerna semper erit necessaria? Non utique. Donec dies lucescat. Mane enim astabo et contemplabor. Ad lucernam interim nocturnam pertinet quod filii Dei sumus, et nondum apparuit quid erimus. Et in comparatione quidem impiorum, dies summus, Paulo dicente: Fuistis aliquando tenebrae, nunc autem lux in Domino. Sed si comparemus illi vitae in qua futuri sumus, adhuc nox sumus, et lucerna indigemus. Sancta Beda, In II Epistolam Sancti Petri, Caput I Source: Migne PL 93.73a

To which you do well to be attentive, as to a lamp shining in a dark place... 1 The order of the sense is this: 'to which attending, as to a lamp shining in a dark place, you do well.' In the night of this age full of dark temptations, where it is difficult to find anyone who does not stumble, what are we if we do not have the lamp of the prophetic word? But shall a lamp not always be necessary? Not so. 'Until the day comes,' he then says. 'For in the morning I will stand and see.' 2 Meanwhile the lamp in the night means that we are the sons of God 'and it has not yet appeared what we shall be.' 3 Certainly in comparison to the impious we are the day, as Paul says: 'You were once in darkness, but now light in the Lord.' 4 But if we compare it to the life which we shall have, we are yet night, and we have need of a lamp. Saint Bede, Commentary on the Second Letter of Peter, Chapter 1 1 2 Pet 1.19 2 Ps 5.5 3 1 Jn 3.2 4 Ephes 5.8