Word to the Wise
Saturday, December 13, 2025 - 2nd Week of Advent - Sat
[Sir 48:1-4, 9-11 and Matt 17:9a, 10-13]How awesome are you, Elijah, in your wondrous deeds! Whose glory is equal to yours?....You were destined, it is written, in time to come to put an end to wrath before the day of the Lord, to turn back the hearts of fathers toward their sons, and to re-establish the tribes of Jacob. Blessed is he who shall have seen you and who falls asleep in your friendship. [Sirach] "Why do the scribes say that Elijah must come first?" [Jesus] said in reply, "Elijah will indeed come and restore all things; but I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him but did to him whatever they pleased. So will the Son of Man suffer at their hands." Then the disciples understood that he was speaking to them of John the Baptist. [Matthew]
DECEMBER 13 ST. LUCY, virgin and martyr
The question posed by the disciples arose from the experience of Jesus' transfiguration on the mountain. They saw a vision of Jesus accompanied by Moses and Elijah, who personified the Law and the Prophets, of which Jesus would be the fulfillment. The scribes, scholars of the law, would have been familiar with the words from the Book of Sirach that refer to a return of Elijah before the end of time. Jesus tells them that Elijah came in the person of John the Baptist, and, like Jesus, he would be unrecognized and persecuted by those who should have known better.
Prophecy can be both a promise of hope and a warning to be worthy of that hope. So much of the prophecy of Isaiah that we have been reading during Advent speaks to the hope that God offered to Israel which time and again they failed to recognize until disaster struck. Elijah and John the Baptist remain colorful prophetic figures but they are significant in the message to us that our lives should be worthy of the promise to be realized in the birth of Jesus, his ministry and his death and resurrection. Hope and warning are on offer. What is our response? AMEN