Elijah Reborn
Thursday:
Eleventh Week of the Year: June 16, 2016
Year II: Sirach 48: 1-15; Psalm
97:1-7; Matthew 6:7-15
The Responsorial Psalm invites us to look at what God has done and take
courage: “Let the just rejoice in the
Lord “ (Psalm 97).
Sirach
48: 1-15 is
a litany of the manifestations of God’s power through Elijah. He “arose like a
fire” to “restore the tribes of Jacob” through “prophecies of doom” and
promises of healing supported by awesome acts of power.
The Gospels identify John the
Baptizer with the promised return of Elijah: “With the spirit and power of
Elijah he will go before him, to turn the hearts of parents to their children,
and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous.”1
But in the new Elijah God showed
his power in a different way. He revealed the mystery of God’s greatest power:
the power of love acting, not through violence and force, but through surrender
and sacrifice. John was killed in a preview of Christ’s own death to show that
Jesus was going to save the world in an unexpected way: “I tell you that Elijah
has already come, and they did not recognize him, but they did to him whatever
they pleased. So also the Son of Man is about to suffer at their hands.”2
The “new Elijah” was the
forerunner of a new and unexpected kind of Savior. 3
It is in this new spirit of
gentleness and “enduring love” that Christians minister as Christ. It is to
this we look when the just rejoice in the
Lord.
Matthew
6: 7-15
teaches us that the secret to praying well is to make Jesus’ priorities the
priorities of our own hearts. First, we should desire above all things that God
in his transcendent majesty be adored and glorified: “Hallowed be thy name!”
Then that on earth his kingship should be established and his will be done as
perfectly as it is in heaven. Finally, that in heaven we will all be gathered
together at the “wedding banquet of the Lamb, where Jesus will be the delight, the
“bread” of the banquet and all will be experiencing together the “peace and
unity” of his kingdom in total reconciliation with God and with each other.
There we will all be forgiving each another as God is forgiving us, in
unrestricted mutual love.
Jesus did not give us the Our Father as a formula of words to be
memorized,4 but as an interior stance of the heart to be cultivated.
Teresa of Avila says the words of memorized prayers can be “meditation” if our
way of saying them is deep and reflective. If it is not, she says, it is not
prayer at all, “no matter how much the lips move.” All true prayer is prayer in
the “secret” of the heart.
Initiative:
Give God’s life: Be a “priest in the Priest.” Unite your heart to
Christ’s in prayer and action.
Footnotes:
1.Luke
1:17.
2 Matthew
17:12.
3 See
Monday, above, and Matthew 16: 13-28.
4 The wording differs
in Luke 11:12.
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