The great prophet Elijah burns with zeal for the Lord. Unfortunately, his zeal is mixed with a good deal of anger. The Lord doesn’t directly reprove or punish Elijah for his excessive anger, but with the teaching about the “still small voice,” and the Lord’s question, “Elijah, why are you here?” we can understand that Elijah has not yet completed his inner-journey. The Lord instructs him to return and prepare the next generation of leadership, it is time for Elijah to think about what comes next and bring new purpose to why he is here.
Saint Barnabas, apostle
Love of neighbor was certainly a commandment of the Old Law. Sometimes we might imagine that Jesus’ commandment of love was something revolutionary. What is revolutionary – at His time – is the shift of emphasis. We live thousands of years later and are completely unacquainted with the daily practice of the Old Covenant. We consider the old and external practices to be the unimportant details of religious observance. That is our modern perspective, so when we hear Jesus telling us not to neglect the least of the commandments, we suppose He is referring to the minute points of external observance. In fact, Jesus is speaking to the world-view of his listeners, who are used to considering the commandments concerning love as “least.”
Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time
In the time of Elijah, the people of Israel were again turning from the commandments of God. Not that they had a problem with the Lord – of course not – the God of Israel is just fine with them. What they weren’t interested in was having to choose exclusively one God to worship. The pagans offered a variety of rites and gods – especially one named Baal who was particularly concerned with storms. This Baal had clearly not been doing much because there was a severe drought. Elijah told everyone that the drought was caused by the Lord, but they weren’t ready to turn away completely from the foreign Baals and back to him. Elijah tells them they are “straddling” the issue – but the word also means that they are limping around. The same word comes back to describe the ceremony performed by the priests of Baal – limping around and crying out to Baal. That would make them appear unfit to offer the true cult to the true God – and would make it seem that the people of Israel have become just as unfit to worship the true God by their wishy-washy straddling of the issue: is the Lord the true God or not?