Saturday, 12/14/13
The readings today
feature John the Baptist who is like the Poster Boy for Advent. In his single-hearted
dedication to the Lord, he is likened to the Prophet Elijah.
On the last page of
our Old Testament we have the prediction by the Prophet Malachi that Elijah
will return before the day of the Lord. The final verse in the Old Testament
states, “Lo, I will send you Elijah, the
prophet, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day.”
Then, in today’s
Gospel, when the disciples asked Jesus why the scribes say that Elijah must
return before the day of the Lord, Jesus said that Elijah had already returned;
and the disciples realized he was speaking of John the Baptist.
John was not
actually identical with Elijah. They had different blood types and different
DNA. But, in a poetical sense he was Elijah.
In teaching grade
school Religion classes I used Our Lord’s identifying John with Elijah as an
example of how we could not always take Bible verses as being literally true.
Our school had a number
of Jewish and Protestant kids who didn’t seem to mind my classes. In fact, they
usually did better than the Catholics. However, I remember one Baptist boy who
insisted on taking every Bible verse as literally true. If I said that some
things were written with “poetic license,” he would say, “I don’t care what you
say, Father, I will always believe my Bible.”
Once when I asked
each kid in the class to tell a story about a time when he or she stood up for their beliefs, the Baptist
boy wrote, “It happens every day in this class.”
Maybe ten years
later he turned up as best man at a wedding, and he thanked me for showing how
to understand the Bible.
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