December 14, 2013
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)
Elijah 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 up till today Elijah’s return to announce the coming of the Messiah. This explains why they refused to accept Jesus. 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 in the regular. Consider the case of the sun reportedly seen dancing several years ago from a hill in Carcar, Cebu. In an instant people trooped to that hill like an ant line. Funds poured in substantially, enough to build a shrine and to erect a big statue of the Blessed Virgin. But the number of pilgrims dwindled even before the shrine was completed because the sun danced no more. But it was good riddance! Now only serious devotees frequent the place.
“Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last”, wrote Blaise Pascal in “Pensees”. 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.
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. – Rev. Fr. Dan Domingo P. delos Angeles, Jr., DM, Email: [email protected]. Website: www.frdan.org.
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