December 23, 2023
(St. John of Kanty, Priest)
Through the Prophet Malachi, the LORD, God said, “Lo, I will send you Elijah, the prophet, before the day of the LORD comes, the great and terrible day, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with doom.” Mal_3:1-4,23-24
God knew, that there was something fishy going on down here. And it was going on for a long, long time. We needed a wake-up call. And Elijah was the guy! “Make straight the way of the Lord,” Isaiah would preach. And Elijah would return! He returned in the person of John the Baptist and He returned in the Transfiguration of Jesus along with Moses. Hundreds of years after Malachi and Isaiah and Jeremiah, after Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the Temple, after all the struggles of the Maccabees, the Greeks and the Romans, Jesus would come to find – that there was still something pretty fishy going on ’round here. And this time it was not only with the common folk, it was with the very leaders of what was supposed to be their Jewish faith.
And the common folk were skeptical, and hesitant, and were still following whatever trend happened to be popular at the time, “like sheep without a shepherd.”
At the naming of John (the Baptist), Zechariah, Elizabeth’s husband, received from God his voice and hearing back again. “Then fear came upon all their neighbors, and all these matters were discussed throughout the hill country of Judea. All who heard these things took them to heart, saying, “What, then, will this child be? For surely the hand of the Lord was with him.” Lk_1:57-66
And they would find out, in time! John, God’s Elijah, was given (by God) to the world, that we might hear again, the warning. Turn BACK! Repent! Make straight the Way of the Lord. Given to the world that we might open OUR ears and our mouths, like Zechariah, to proclaim the Good News; that God loves us so very much that He came among us in human flesh, to show us what Love really means. And His name is JESUS!
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Whispers to the Wind 