Saturday of the Second Week in Advent 2023
Sirach is a book named for its author, Jesus ben Sira. This is a book Catholics use in the Liturgy, but Protestants generally don't accept as inspired. We call it "deuterocanonical;" they call it "apocryphal." Our reading from the deuterocanonical book of Sirach, , shows just how vitally important the prophet Elijah was to the Jews in the time right before and during the earthly life of Jesus Christ. Even today, when Jewish families sit down for the Passover Seder, by strict observance each family is supposed to leave one chair unoccupied for Elijah. The prophet Malachi many centuries after Elijah wrote that before the Day of the Lord comes, the era called the “end times,” Elijah would come back “to turn the hearts of children to their fathers, and fathers to their children.” Without that reappearance, God would strike the Holy Land with a curse. (Mal 4: 5-6)
So the Lord Jesus was asked by His own disciples, specifically Peter, James and John, after the great theophany on Mt. Tabor, where Jesus had conversed with Moses and Elijah, why the scribes taught them about the return of the prophet. Jesus answered in a very candid manner. Yes, Elijah was supposed to come, and actually had come in the person of John the Baptist, His cousin. Moreover, he reminded the three followers that John was not recognized as Elijah, and had been murdered, just as king Ahab would have done to the original Elijah if God had not intervened. That then positioned the whole scene so that it was almost natural for Jesus to predict His own execution by the rulers. And, not to forget, then the Day of the Lord would begin, the day everything would be turned on its head by the Resurrection from the dead. Jesus first, then the rest of believers.
Up to now, all I’ve talked about sounds like a history or bible lesson. What’s the point here, the critical verse. The reappearance of the prophet has one purpose: “to turn the hearts of children to their fathers, and fathers to their children.” In Genesis chapter 3, we start off with the first man and woman in perfect harmony, unity, with each other, with nature, and with God. The serpent, who is the costume for the Evil One, Prince of this world, hater of humankind, tempts them to take a shortcut to divinity, rather than follow the divine plan for men and women to become divinized. The result? The man turns on the woman, both turn against Satan, and everybody is against God and His plan. And that could have been the end of the great divine experiment, the crown of God’s creative action. But God promised, along with the curses of hard childbirth and painful labor, that the woman–certainly a descendant of this pitiful excuse for a woman–would be always in enmity with the serpent, and that her seed would crush his vile head. Jesus Christ, born of the Virgin Mary, whom Jesus called “woman,” ascended the cross, died and crushed the serpent’s head by His Resurrection. Moreover, in God’s plan all those things that were torn apart in the Fall now would be put back together. Families would have the opportunity to be reunited in His Church, and grace would establish all the new earth as a blessing, not a curse.
What we must do to be part of this great redemptive plan is pretty simple, if not terribly easy. We must repent of our own sins that tore us apart from our family or this earth or anything else in God’s creation, believe in Jesus Christ and be baptized into Him. We will then through faith and sacramental lives of prayer grow in stature until we all are made perfect images of Jesus, our Lord and Savior
