Catechesis by Benedict XVI at the General Audience on June 15, 2011
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the religious history of Israel, the prophets played a major role with their teachings and preaching. Among them, the figure of Elijah stands out, whom God called to lead the people to repentance. The name Elijah means “My God is the Lord.” In harmony with this name, the life of this prophet unfolds, wholly dedicated to inducing the people to recognize the Lord as the only God. Sirach writes about Elijah: “The prophet Elijah rose like a fire, and his word burned like a torch” (Sir 48:1). Through this flame, Israel found its way back to God. In the course of his ministry, Elijah prays: he asks the Lord—God—to restore life to the son of the widow who hosted him (cf. 1 Kings 17:17–24), he calls to God when he is exhausted and tormented by anxieties during his flight into the wilderness before Queen Jezebel, who seeks his life (cf. 1 Kings 19:1–4), but in full strength, his intercession shows itself primarily on Mount Carmel, when he prays before all Israel for the Lord to reveal Himself and turn the hearts of the people. This story is recounted in the eighteenth chapter of the Book of Kings, which we will pause upon.
We find ourselves in the northern kingdom in the 9th century BC during the time of King Ahab when a situation of open syncretism arose in Israel. Besides the Lord, the people worshipped Baal, an idol they comforted themselves with, believed to send rain, and thought to grant fertility to the land and life to people and animals. Even though the people deluded themselves into believing they adhered to the Lord, the invisible and mysterious God, they sought certainty in this small god, who was understandable, whose actions could be predicted, and whom they believed would provide fertility and prosperity in exchange for the sacrifices offered to him. Israel succumbed to the allure of idolatry, which constantly tempts the believer, and thought that “one can serve two masters” (cf. Mt 6:24; Lk 16:13) and ease the difficult path of faith in the Almighty by placing trust in a powerless idol made by humans.
Precisely to unmask the deceptive foolishness of such a stance, Elijah gathered the people of Israel on Mount Carmel and presented them with the necessity of a clear choice: “If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 Kings 18:21). And the prophet, bearer of God’s love, does not leave his people alone in this choice, but helps them, providing a sign to reveal the truth. Both he and the prophets of Baal prepare a burnt offering and pray for the true God to reveal Himself by answering with fire that consumes the prepared sacrifice. Thus begins the clash between the prophet Elijah and the followers of Baal, but in reality, it is a conflict between the God of Israel, the God of salvation and life, and the mute, powerless idol that can achieve nothing, neither good nor evil (cf. Jer 10:5). Additionally, there is a conflict between two completely different ways of praying and relating to God.
The prophets of Baal cry out, leap, dance, enter into ecstasy, and even start to mutilate their bodies “with swords and spears, until blood flowed from them” (1 Kings 18:28). They turn to themselves to request their god and invoke his response—with their own abilities. Thus it becomes evident how deceptive (lying) idols are: people consider them as something they can control, something they can dominate with their own power. Worshiping an idol, instead of opening the human heart to the Other, the liberating connection that allows one to emerge from the narrow space of egoism and open to the dimension of love and mutual self-giving—locks a person into a desperate and exclusive cycle of self-searching. The deception lies in the fact that when a person bows down to an idol, in an illusory effort to subjugate it to his will, he is forced to resort to extreme acts. For the sake of Baal, his prophets reach the point of harming themselves, inflicting bodily injuries. This gesture is a dramatic irony: to receive an answer, a sign of life from their idol, they inflict bleeding wounds and symbolically shroud themselves in death.
Elijah's demeanor in prayer is entirely different. He asks the people to come near, thus involving them in his actions and his plea. This entire event, how he called the priests of Baal, was meant to guide back to God his people that had become estranged through idolatry. Therefore, Elijah wants Israel to unite with him now and to become a co-participant and main participant in his prayer and the forthcoming events. Then—standing in the text—he rebuilds the altar using “twelve stones, according to the number of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came: ‘Israel is your name’” (v. 31). These stones represent all of Israel and serve as a tangible reminder of the history of election, promise, and salvation of this people. Elijah's liturgical gesture has crucial significance; the altar is a sacred place pointing to the presence of the Lord, but the stones from which it is built represent the people. Thus, the people now, through the prophet’s actions, symbolically stand before God, becoming an “altar”, a place of offerings and sacrifices.
However, it is necessary for the symbol to become reality, for Israel to recognize the true God and to rediscover its identity as the people of the Lord. Therefore, Elijah asks God to reveal Himself; and those twelve stones, which are meant to remind Israel of the truth, are also meant to remind the Lord of His faithfulness, which the prophet invokes in his prayer. Elijah’s prayer words are dense with meaning and full of faith: “O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known today that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back to you!” (vv. 36–37; cf. Gen 32:36–37). Elijah addresses the Lord as the God of the fathers, explicitly invoking God’s promises, the history of election, and the covenant that irrevocably linked the Lord and His people. God’s involvement in the history of humanity is of such intensity that His Name is inseparably connected to the names of the patriarchs, and the prophet pronounces this holy Name so that God may remember and manifest His faithfulness, but also so that Israel may feel that they are being called (by their own) name and thus rediscover their faithfulness.
Elijah’s address to God is somewhat surprising. Instead of using the usual forms “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, he uses the less common designation “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel”. The substitution of the name Jacob for the name Israel evokes Jacob’s struggle at the stream Jabbok, after which—as the sacred writer explicitly notes (cf. Gen 32:31)—Jacob receives a new name and about which I spoke in one of the previous catecheses. This name substitution takes on precise significance within the context of Elijah’s prayer. The prophet prays for the people of the northern kingdom, which was referred to as Israel, in contrast to the name Judah, which designated the southern kingdom. And now this people, which seems to have forgotten its origins and its privileged relationship with the Lord, hears its name called as the name of God is pronounced, the name of the God of their patriarchs and the God of this people: “O Lord, God (... of Israel), let it be known today that you are God in Israel”.
The people for whom Elijah prays is faced with the truth, and the prophet asks for the truth of the Lord to be revealed and for Him to intervene and convert Israel, to free it from the deception of idolatry and lead it to salvation. He asks for the people to finally learn and fully know who their true God is, and to definitively decide to follow Him, the true God. Only in this way is God acknowledged as Who He is; He is recognized as Absolute and Transcendent, without being able to be placed alongside other gods. To do so would mean denying that He is Absolute and relativizing Him. This is the faith that makes Israel the people of God and that is professed in the well-known text of Shema Israel: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength!” (Dt 6:4–5). In response to the fact that God is absolute, the believer must respond with absolute, unconditional love, encompassing his whole life, his energies, his heart. And thus, with the heart of His people, the prophet intercedes for conversion: “that this people may know that you, O Lord, are the true God; you will turn their hearts!” (1 Kings 18:37). Elijah, in his intercession, asks God for what God Himself wishes to do, namely to reveal Himself in all His mercy, faithful to His own nature as the Lord of life who forgives, converts, and transforms.
And so it happens: “The fire of the Lord fell from heaven and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and it licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, ‘The Lord, He is God! The Lord, He is God!’” (vv. 38–39). Fire, this necessary and terrifying element, associated with God’s revelations (through the burning bush and at Sinai), now expresses the love of God responding to prayer and revealing Himself to His people. The mute and powerless god Baal did not answer the pleas of his prophets. The Lord, however, answered clearly, not only by consuming the burnt offering but also by drying up all the water that was poured around the altar. Israel can have no more doubts; God’s mercy has met their weakness, their doubts, their lack of faith. Now Baal, the empty idol, is defeated, and the people, who seemed lost, have found their way back to the truth and to themselves.
Dear brothers and sisters, what does this ancient story say to us?
What is contemporary about it?
First of all, it underscores the importance of the first commandment: to worship only God. Where God fades away, man falls into slavery to various forms of idolatry, as totalitarian regimes have shown in our time, and as various kinds of nihilism continue to show, which make a person dependent on idols and idolatry and enslave him.
Secondly: the primary purpose of prayer is conversion. The fire of the Lord transforms our hearts and enables us to see God, thus living according to God and living for others.
And thirdly: the fathers teach us that this story also has a prophetic character, as it prefigures Christ. It is a stage on the journey to Christ. They tell us that here we see the true fire of God: the love that leads the Lord to the cross, to the complete gift of Himself. True worship of God, real adoration, thus means the giving of oneself to God and to others. True worship of God rests in love. Worshiping God does not destroy a person; rather, it renews and transforms him. Yes, the fire of God, the fire of love, burns, transforms, purifies, but it does not destroy; rather, it creates the truth of our being, re-creates our hearts. And thus, truly revived by the grace of the fire of the Holy Spirit, the love of God, we worship God “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:23).
Edited translation by Fr. Milan Glaser, S.J.,
published with the kind permission of the Czech section of Vatican Radio.
We direct those interested in more texts from the Holy Father to the website
www.radiovaticana.cz
