Spirituality

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The coming of Christ destroys 'enchantment'

Friday, January 9, 2026Spirituality

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With the coming of the sun, one attains clarity and vision. Yet at the same time, the landscape loses "atmosphere" and perceptible mysteriousness.

Michael
Pakaluk

In the days following Epiphany, the church celebrates the dawning of the light of Christ upon the pagans, as foretold in the reading from Isaiah (60:2-3) in last Sunday's Mass:
See, darkness covers the earth,
and thick clouds cover the peoples;
but upon you the Lord shines,
and over you appears his glory.
Nations shall walk by your light.
This prophecy and others like it envision a single strong light, which arises and burns away darkness.
Perhaps you have walked across a high meadow or a moor at a time when the sun was burning away mist and fog. The aspect of everything around you changes, from a romantic haziness to stark and clear outlines. As engineers and economists like to say, everything is a tradeoff. With the coming of the sun, one attains clarity and vision. Yet at the same time, the landscape loses "atmosphere" and perceptible mysteriousness.
An important question is whether this prophesied "light for the nations" is subjective or objective. By subjective I mean that it extends only so far as it is believed to extend by us: the nations are enlightened by this light only insofar as they are evangelized and accept the Gospel. By objective, I mean that it extends over all the nations, to some extent at least, regardless of what they believe. Therefore, it began to extend over them, willy-nilly, with the appearance of Christ celebrated in Epiphany.

St. Athanasius in his work "On the Incarnation" (www.newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm) combines both of these views. Paganism in general decisively lost its power with the coming of Christ. This was an objective, general illumination. The saint says his contemporaries can even see this for themselves, in the cessation of the ancient oracles:
"And whereas formerly every place was full of the deceit of the oracles, and the oracles at Delphi and Dodona, and in Boeotia and Lycia and Libya and Egypt and those of the Cabiri, and the Pythoness, were held in repute by men's imagination, now, since Christ has begun to be preached everywhere, their madness also has ceased and there is none among them to divine any more." (c. 47)
But locally, the sign of the cross must be applied:
"Let him come who would test by experience what we have now said, and in the very presence of the deceit of demons and the imposture of oracles and the marvels of magic, let him use the Sign of that Cross which is laughed at among them, and he shall see how by its means demons fly, oracles cease, all magic and witchcraft is brought to nought." (c. 48)
Sometimes Christians have analogized this kind of phenomenon to war: a conquering army wins a decisive victory, but then it needs to mop up local resistance. St. Athanasius prefers to refer to God's authority, not might. He uses the image of a king. Suppose, he says, that a king remained in his house, so that the citizens could not see him. Pretenders and charlatans would then have a certain scope to claim royal authority. However, when the real king comes out of the house and appears:
"Then the disorderly impostors are exposed by his presence, while men, seeing the real king, desert those who previously led them astray: in like manner, the evil spirits formerly used to deceive men, investing themselves with God's honor; but when the Word of God appeared in a body, and made known to us His own Father, then at length the deceit of the evil spirits is done away and stopped." (c. 55)
The authority of this king is uniform and wise. Similarly, the saint believes, when the oracles and magic cease, and demons flee, they do not leave a vacuum. It is the "logos" after all who became flesh:
"The Word of God took a body and has made use of a human instrument, in order to quicken the body also, and as He is known I n creation by His works, so to work in man as well, and to show Himself everywhere, leaving nothing void of His own divinity."
Can we translate what this great saint taught into talk of "enchantment?" People complain today that the world has become "disenchanted," that all of human life and nature itself have taken on the appearance of a lifeless machine. They blame it on various things, on "the market," Cartesianism, technology, the growth of cities, and alienation from the land. Different critics offer different proposals for "reenchanting the West."
St. Athanasius, I think, would say that with the dawn of the light of Christ, the world was decisively disenchanted. Remember, there is always a tradeoff. With light comes clarity and starkness but also order and truth -- while superficial mystery is dispelled.
However, Christ came to "leave nothing void of his divinity." His purpose is... we will not say "to enchant," as this term derives from magic, but rather "to divinize," that is, to raise up natural realities to a supernatural level.
Yet how is this done? Just like the dawning of the light of Christ, it is accomplished both generally and objectively, and locally and subjectively. In that polity, which is the church, the mystical body of Christ, we see, objectively: the liturgical year, the sacraments, indeed even customs appropriated from the pagans. Subjectively and locally, each of us must apply the graces deriving from our baptism and state in life.

- Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book is "Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew's Gospel.'' You may follow him on Substack at MichaelJosephPakaluk.Substack.com.