ADVENT 2002 MEDITATIONS
Week 1: Holy Prophet Elijah
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Ahab son of Omri became king over Israel in the thirty-eighth year of King Asa of Judah... Not content to follow the sins of Jeroboam, he took as wife Jezebel daughter of King Ethbaal of the Phoenicians and he went and served Baal and worshipped him ... Ahab did more to vex the Lord, the God of Israel, than all the kings of Israel who preceded him...This icon is an attempt to copy an early 13th century masterpiece from Mount Sinai. The original is Holy Prophet Elijah full length with the most profound look of awe tinged with holy fear. God's hand is above the raven blessing Elijah and sending the miraculous food. The reason for the changes that I made was that this was the cover of Father Patrick Arnold's book Wildmen, Warriors and Kings: Masculine Spirituality.
Elijah the Tishbite, an inhabitant of Gilead, said to Ahab, "As the Lord lives, the God of Israel whom I serve, there will be no dew or rain except at my bidding."
1 Kings 16.29-32, 17.1
The Jewish Bible trans.
Filled with the Spirit, fierce, fearless, stark, harsh, and single-hearted, Elijah enters Scripture. We know nothing of his childhood or youth, he simply arrives full-grown as "...the only prophet of the Lord." (I Kgs. 18.22) to confront Ahab, Jezebel and the four hundred fifty prophets of Baal. To see Elijah in his milieu, it is helpful to visualize contemporary prophets and experience our emotional, spiritual, and perhaps even physical reactions simply to the mention of their names. And so we do not keep the vocation of the prophet as a relic of history, but a vocation still given in the here and now. We look at Gandhi before the British Empire and all of India. We remember Oscar Romero, Rutilio Grande, and the murdered Jesuits-their housekeeper and her daughter and the Maryknoll women in El Salvador. We see Sister Diana Ortiz in Guatemala, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Elizabeth McAlister, Dorothy Day, Megan McKenna, Steve Kelly, Susan Crane, John Dear and the Berrigans, before the new "super power" of the United States. We list a brief litany of recent martyrs with awe and reverence, Jerzy Popieluszko of Poland, Padres Sedano and Pro of Mexico, Sister Mary Antoinette in Africa, Thomas Anchanikal in Bihar, the Trappist Martyrs of Algeria, Martin Royakers in Jamaica.
There have been more martyrs in the past century than in all the two thousand years since the Crucifixion of the Lord. What does this say about our century's unprecedented violence and all these tender and bold prophets face to face with the massive governments, religions, institutions, systems aptly labeled by Holy New Prophet John Paul II as cultures of death?
When Ahab caught sight of Elijah, Ahab said to him, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?" He retorted, "It is not I who have brought trouble on Israel, but you and your father's House, by forsaking the commandments of the Lord and going after the Baalim. Now summon all Israel to join me at Mount Carmel..."But before the awful contest on the holy mount, the prophet must himself be nourished and nourish, then give life. Elijah is sent by the Lord to a widow at Zarephath to be fed and feed, to bring her child back to life. Christ will refer to this woman pointedly in one of his many contests with the stonehearted,
1 Kgs. 18.17-19
In truth, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, when there came a great famine over all the land; and Elijah was sent to none of them but only to Zarephath...
Luke 4.25 RSV trans.After this they were filled with wrath Luke says, and wanted to murder him by hurling him off a cliff, But passing through the midst of them he went away.The widow then becomes a mirror of Christ's own choice of disciples, someone poor in spirit, in most cases literally poor. The late Congregationalist Scripture Scholar, G.B.Caird in his commentary on Luke says in fact the only requirement for entrance into the kingdom is an emptiness only God can fill. Fear and preoccupation with worries are the things that most block our entrance.
Luke 4.30
As for the contest of fire with the prophets of Baal, and the mass murders that follow, Christ will form a different way. When the disciples excitedly want to rain down fire on Samaria, Jesus sharply admonishes them, (some ancient manuscripts say)
"You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy peoples' lives but to save them."The contest and murders of Elijah are fearfully violent. We see nothing similar in the new Elijahs, John the Baptist and Christ. Unwilling to justify the vast amount of bloodshed in scripture, prophet Daniel Berrigan will often say, "We don't even get to God until Isaiah." Yet the gospels call up Elijah more than any other prophet as the spirit of the Baptist and the Lord himself. The incidents and patterns which strongly echo Elijah include,
Luke 9:54
the miracles of abundance,
Images from the scriptures around Elijah are so plentiful that they have created many "talking icons". These icons were created with a centerpiece of the prophet and the borders filled with little boxes containing the tales from his life. These talking icons are the seeds that will later evolve into Giotto's story telling frescoes, the medieval prayer and books of hours, Gothic stained glass stories for those unable to read, and finally childrens books.
the prophet himself being miraculously fed,
the raising of the dead,
the call of disciples,
conflict with false prophets, false religion, hypocrisy,
abuse of power in high places,
the weight of oppression and violence on the poor,
the lifting of famine… one can always see drought in nature but it is in us too.
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Before closing our meditation on Elijah, out of the many stories in scripture, I would like to light upon two. First, his encounter with God on Mt. Horeb. This tale so familiar to us will be called upon by centuries of Jews and Christians to illumine the encounter with God by every soul seeking the Beautiful, the Loving, and the Creator. In Christianity Origen, the Fathers, Hildegaard, Bernard, the Author of the Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, Benedict, Dominic, Francis, Ignatius, Teresa, John, Therese, Merton, Bede Griffiths, John Main Adrienne von Speyr and von Balthasar, and innumerable others would pass to their times and followers, in their own distinct ways, the precious, freeing teaching that the voice of God is not found in the inner turmoil and cacophony of battering voices and accusations... the Buddhists call the "yamma, yamma" or "monkey mind." God is found in the still small voice. So many, many apparitions of the Mother of God beg us also to enter this narrow door of simplicity.
The second and final image is Elijah's assumption via the fiery chariot / a prayer itself to witness in the many icons portraying the prophet in the fiery whirlwind. There he stands regally composed in a swirling giant blur of red fire. The holy prophet leaves the earth in a tiny carreta with childlike horses whose reins are held by an angel pulling the tiny box cart into the heavens. Sometimes in these icons Elijah is handing his mantle down to Elisha, and sometimes Elisha tugs desperately on the mantle as if he's bent on pulling Elijah back down.
Elisha sobs,The effect is heart-rending. Whoever has known the love, guidance and deep attachment to an elder, grandmother, grandfather, teacher or spiritual guide, relives with Elisha the pain of the tearing away of the "safe one" who admonishes, encourages and brings God to you... or opens the God within you. We revisit the desolation of the Mother and Disciples of Christ each year during Holy Week and Easter season. In a life of Francis called The Mirror of Perfection, the Friars
Oh, father, father! Israel's chariots and horsemen! When he could no longer see him, he grasped his garments and rent them in two.
2 Kgs. 2.12
"…saw him almost dying from extreme exhaustion and pain, they said to him with the deepest grief and many tears, 'Father, what shall we do without you? To whose charge will you leave us orphans? You have always been father and mother to us; you have conceived and brought us forth in Christ ... Where shall we go without a shepherd, children without a mother, rough and simple men without a leader ... Who will now show us blind men the way of truth?"What are we to do? Scripture tells us what we will do willingly or unwillingly, courageous or fearful... ready or not. We will inherit the Spirit. The Spirit which moves and animates our guides; the holy souls of Elijah, Clare, Ignatius, Adrienne and Dorothy. In the gospel of John, the Lord promises not to leave us orphans, but to send the animating Spirit. We see so clearly the life of the Spirit burning in these ordinary people we call saints. After their deaths the golden nimbus smoking around each head, that artists apply, proclaim that these witnesses, enflamed by a gathering courage from the Paraclete, are now Hagia, Hagios… saint. It is the Spirit's action which raises them from the paralysis of fear to a resurrection of finding and living their own peculiar mission.
Mirror 87
In our own lifetime Holy Prophet John Paul II has prophesied in language reminiscent of Trito-Isaiah the ecstatic writer of chapter 60, thought to be the disciple of Deutero- Isaiah that…
There will be a new springtime for the Church if people will welcome the promptings of the Holy Spirit, the 21st. Century will usher in a new evangelization and, a tidal wave of conversion will sweep the earth.
John Paul II
24 October 2002
William Hart Dominic McNichols
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Page Last Updated: December 10, 2002
