Elijah and John the Baptist

December 14, 2019
Saturday, 2nd Week of Advent
St. John of the Cross
1st Reading: Sir 48:1-4, 9-11
Gospel: Mt 17:9a, 10-13
As they were coming down the mountainside, the disciples then asked Jesus, “Why do the teachers of the Law say that Elijah must come first?” And Jesus answered, “So it is: first comes Elijah to set everything as it has to be. But I tell you, Elijah has already come and they did not recognize him, but treated him as they pleased. And they will also make the Son of Man suffer.” Then the disciples understood that Jesus was referring to John the Baptist.
D@iGITAL-EXPERIENCE
(Daily Gospel in the Assimilated Life Experience)
“Why do the teachers of the Law say that Elijah must come first?”, asked the disciples of Jesus. The answer to this question was crucial to the people’s acceptance of Jesus as Messiah. By simple logic they concluded that since Elijah did not return yet, the Messiah couldn’t have arrived. This explains why most Jews found it hard to accept Jesus.
Who was Elijah? He was a prophet in Israel in the 9th century BCE. He appears in the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Mishnah, Christian Bible, and the Qur’an. According to the Book of Kings, Elijah raised the dead, brought fire down from the sky, and ascended into heaven by a whirlwind. Based on a prophecy in Malachi, many Jews await Elijah’s return to announce the coming of the Messiah. In the understanding of the Jews, therefore, the coming back of Elijah was to signal the arrival of the Messiah.
Actually, Elijah already returned in the person of John the Baptist (Matt. 11:11-15) but he was too simple to be Elijah whom they expected to return on a chariot of fire. We too readily recognize God’s handiworks in the spectacular but reluctantly acknowledge in the regular. “Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last”, wrote Blaise Pascal in “Pensees”. But if curiosity is a good driving force at the level of science, it is a lousy handmaid at the level of the spirit. Curiosity at the level of science moves one to create. But at the spiritual level you don’t create; you grow. Growth can be painful – something curiosity cannot sustain. What you need at the level of the spirit is genuine faith. Only faith can make one truly grow.
While spectacular things are not absolutely alien to God’s manner of self revelation, God’s ways are often small, insignificant, and even hidden from the eyes which are trained only to recognize the spectacular. This led the Jews to utter loss because in their expectation that Elijah would come back on chariots of fire to announce the coming of the Messiah, they failed to recognize God’s visitation. – (Atty.) Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., J.D., D.M.