BEFORE MY DAY COMES, I WILL SEND YOU ELIJAH, MY PROPHET

BEFORE MY DAY COMES, I WILL SEND YOU ELIJAH, MY PROPHET

By Fr. Felix (African Times Guest Writer)

The Reading from the Book of the prophet

Malachi (3:1-4, 23-24) is familiar from the aria

(first part of the classical music) early in

Handel’s Messiah, whose music depicts the

frightening and flickering flames of the refiner’s

fire and the fuller’s alkali, making a last-minute

cleansing of the sons of Levi before the coming

of the Messiah.

The final verses of the reading identify the

messenger of the covenant as the prophet

Elijah, probably because the Bible tells us not

that Elijah died, but that he was taken up into

heaven.

This may be the reason why he appears with

Moses at the Transfiguration. It also made him

a ready messenger, just as (already in the

period between the Old and New Testaments)

Henoch was. In the tradition he was regarded

as the revealer of secrets, for in the Bible it is

not said that he died, but that ‘Henoch walked

with God, then was no more because God took

him’ (Genesis 5.24).

The Word of The Lord is the prophetic

prediction of the cataclysmic upheavals at the

end of time are reminiscent of the images of

dying people in hospices as well as places of

hospitality. It is the moment of choice radically

linked to a life now ending but opening another.