After the Lord consumed the sacrifice of Elijah with fire and thereby showed his people he alone is the true God, the priests of Baal were slaughtered. This enraged Jezebel and she swore to kill Elijah in the same way, by slitting his throat. And so he fled into the mountainous region known as the Horeb. Mount Sinai was one of the mountain peaks in this region and is the sacred place wherein God gave Moses the ten commandments. "Horeb" is thought to mean “dry place or glowing heat” which seems to be a reference to the Sun, while Sinai may have been derived from the name of Sin, the Ancient Mesopotamian religion deity of the Moon, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountains of the Moon and Sun, respectively. Of course to the Catholic mind we now take the Sun to represent our Lord Jesus, and the Moon, his Mother whom he made our own. Horeb is where today’s first reading picks up from.
Elijah was ready to lay down and die, but it wasn’t his time yet, as God still had use for him. How many times could it have been the end of our own earthly pilgrimage, but it was not yet the time? God asks him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” Again, this is much akin to God asking Adam and Eve where they were and why it is they were naked, in that he already knows the answer to all those questions, and yet he is inducing Elijah to an examination of conscience as Elijah earlier had prayed, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” 1Kings 19:4. Instead of deciding ourselves when and how our end shall be, we need to always remember who alone is the Lord of our lives and who alone has the right to give life and take it. We make ourselves a god, when we assume this prerogative that belongs solely to God.
To his credit, Elijah hands it over to God, but wants his life to end, nevertheless. How much of this do we have in our own cultures of death today with euthanasia and assisted suicide, and in most cases, God is not even considered, much less invoked! God alone will decide our fate, and when we think we are at the moment of death, having been cultivating a loving relationship with our Creator, the faithful thing to do is ask for a priest. We know the teaching. Saint James reminds us of this: “Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the priests of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven.”
Elijah here in this first reading, is receiving a type of foreshadowing—a prefiguring of the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick which the Lord would institute in time and who Himself here comes to Elijah to bless him, and strengthen him for he still had great things in store for him and a mission for him to accomplish. The time would come when his earthly journey would come to an end, and he would be taken by God in a chariot of fire, but now is not that time.
In the meanwhile he has come to the mountain of the Lord. Traditionally, the Lord is especially present on the tops of mountains. We remember Moses on Mount Sinai, the mountain where Jesus delivered his Sermon, and Mount Tabor where Jesus allowed himself to become gloriously translucent and transfigured to Peter, James and John revealing his divinity once again to them as a preparation for the trials to come. We remember also the greatest of all mountains, upon which God’s greatest wonder and miracle was revealed—Mount Calvary, upon which the Lord God Almighty allowed himself to be crucified so as to atone for our sins and give us a chance to cooperate with his grace and enter paradise with him forever. So, mountains are particularly special in biblical spirituality and not just awesome topographical gifts from God to behold in awe and wonder.
On the mountain, Elijah is told to await the Lord passing by, and: “…there was a great wind…but the Lord was not in the wind, and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire…And after the fire there came the sound of a gentle breeze.” This is a manifestation of how the Lord is master over the elements, and often comes in the calm or to bring peace. It is very reminiscent of our Lord walking through the storm on the waves of the sea, and when he got into the boat with the apostles, he stretched forth his hand and silenced the waves, and brought the sea to a gentle calm. What a beautiful foreshadowing, once again, we see here in the Lord’s visitation to Elijah. How often has the Lord come to us in the silence, and through a gentle breeze? Are we stopping to listen?
Elijah immediately recognised the presence of God. The whisper of a light breeze or the sound of silence signifies that God is a spirit and that he converses intimately with his prophets. The image of a gentle breeze reminds us of the gentle breath or wind of the Spirit which, as Jesus told Nicodemus, blows where it will. It speaks most eloquently of God as spirit and of the way he penetrates quietly into the most intimate corners of our life. It is why it is so necessary for us to be sensitive to God’s loving presence at all times.
When God asks Elijah what he is doing on the mountain, the prophet responds with a tone of distress given his life was being sought and his fellow countrymen had gone rogue on the Lord, and became idolaters even when the Lord showed them many signs. We can imagine, having been an intimate friend of God, Elijah would have expected the Lord to avenge him, but that would miss the point entirely of the symbolic phenomenon he had just witnessed, and that the Lord is not to be looked for in violent behaviour, but in the quiet inspirations of his presence.
Elijah is now given a mission – his last as a prophet. He is to go first to the wilderness near Damascus. Apparently he is to go back by way of the road east of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. He will go back to the east side of the Jordan, from which he had originally come. He is also told to anoint two kings, Hazael for Aram and Jehu for Israel (Northern Kingdom), and also Elisha as his own successor.
We too are on a mission. We are on a mission to observe our Lord Jesus’ directives and to live his message in our lives. We are to walk humbly before our God and before our fellow man, because a lot has been given to us through the coming of Jesus, and so a lot will be demanded. In today’s gospel we see how Jesus is demanding more of his followers when it comes to holy living, and knowing and acknowledging the presence of the Lord even in the tiniest actions and the dignity we afford our brothers and sisters. Our Lord for example speaks of adultery, but that now one is liable of that sin even if they look at someone lustfully desiring them for impure purposes. Our Lord loves us so much that he does not want us to ever be exploited, used, and turned into objects. And he definitely doesn’t want us to be the ones who exploit others for self-gain.
Our Lady said it at Lourdes, “penance, penance, penance.” Unless we become a people of penance and those who live with deep respect for the God who loves us, we too, like Elijah’s countrymen will be lost in a world of false idols. Our Lord wants us to be pure of all the false gods that can crop up in our lives. He wants us to continue to build on the beautiful relationship we may already have been graced to be in with him, and to not take anything for granted. He wants us to be people of vision and to never give up. Like Elijah, he will be with us always, and sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances and ways. Let us continue to be attentive to his presence. Amen.
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