Homily

Today we celebrate the memory of the Prophet Elijah, whose name may also be pronounced ELIYAHU in the more Hebrew style, or Elias, after the Greek style. Although many people think the role of prophet is to foretell the future, in the Scripture a prophet's job was to speak the word of God, which may include future events but certainly not all the time. St. Elijah began his vocation as a prophet about 870 years before Christ, during the reign of King Ahab in Israel. The Lord commanded Elijah to tell King Ahab that there would be a drought and no rain would fall until God decided differently. This was in response to Ahab allowing his Phoenician wife, Jezebel to spread the religion of the god Baal throughout the country. Many Israelites were offering sacrifice to Baal.

The Lord told Elijah to go out into the country to the brook of Cherith where he would find water, and He sent ravens everyday to Elijah to bring him food. When the brook dried up, the Lord instructed him to go to Zarephath, near Tyre and Sidon, and find a widow there who would take care of him, despite the fact that she was a Gentile. When Elijah met the widow at the city gates, he asked her for a cup of water and a little bread. But she told him that she and her son had so little food left that this would be their last meal. But she did as he asked, and as Elijah had promised her, the family flour jug was never empty after that and her jar of oil never ran dry.

One day the prophet saw this widow holding the body of her son, who had died after being sick for several days. Elijah took his body up to his own room and stretched himself over the boy three times, praying to the Lord to restore him back to life. The Lord heard his prayer, and he gave the son back to his mother. This Gentile woman said, "Now I know indeed that you are a man of God.

In the third year of the famine the Lord told Elijah to present himself to King Ahab that he might send rain again on the earth. The prophet meets up with Obadiah, the king's minister, and a man who was devoted to the Lord. While Jezebel was murdering the prophets of the Lord, Obadiah tried to hide them from her. Elijah tells Obadiah to arrange a meeting with the king, but the minister is afraid because King Ahab has been looking for Elijah to put him to death. The prophet decides to go to Ahab on his own. He tells the king to assemble 450 prophets of Baal, and to call them and all the people, along with 400 prophets for the god Asherath, to gather on Mount Carmel. Elijah spoke to the crowd, "How long will you straddle the issue? If the Lord is God, follow Him; if Baal, follow him." The people said nothing.

Elijah called for two young bulls to be killed, and one to be given to the prophets of Baal and placed on wood for a sacrifice, and he would take the other bull and do the same. Each side would call on their Lord, and the God who lights the wood for the sacrifice is the true God. The pagan prophets began calling on Baal to ignite their sacrifice from morning until noon but nothing happened. Elijah couldn't help himself and he urged them to call louder saying that perhaps Baal was sleeping and they need to wake him up. The prophets began to cut themselves and blood flowed, and yet the fire did not come. The Bible says, "There was not a sound; no one answered and no one was listening."

Then Elijah called the people over to him and he repaired an altar of the Lord on Mt. Carmel that had been destroyed, and re-dedicated it to God. He prepared the wood and the bull for sacrifice, and ordered the people to fill four jars with water and pour it over the sacrifice and the wood. He told them to do the same thing two more times, until the trench around the sacrifice was even full of water. Then he prayed, ". . . let it be known in Israel that you are God and that I am your servant and have done all these things by our command. Answer me, Lord! Answer me that this people may know that you, Lord, are God, and that you have brought them back to their senses." The Lord's fire came down and consumed the bull, the wood and even the altar stones, and vaporized all the water in the trench.

All the people fell prostrate to the ground and cried out, "The Lord is God! The Lord is God!"

Elijah told King Ahab that the rain would now fall again, and soon, in a very dramatic way the heavy rains once again fell upon Israel.

The Lord still had many duties for this prophet, who at times became very depressed because it seemed to him that no matter what he said, no matter what the Lord did, Ahab and Jezebel would not repent, and the people of Israel, for the most part, deserted the God of Israel in favor of false gods. And even more, his life was constantly under threat of death from both king and queen. But Elijah persisted, as the lord commanded him, and performed many more tasks in Israel until the day when the Lord sent a fiery chariot for him, and he ascended into the heavens in a whirlwind.

I think it's very proper that our Hermit Sisters chose this feastday to take their vows before the Lord, because they do as Elijah did. Of course they do not go out to speak the word of the Lord to kings or rulers. In fact, they don't get out much at all. Their job is not to perform great deeds at the Lord's command, and bring down fire from heaven. They have never even lit our kitchen stove here. On the plus side, however, they don't have to wait for crows to bring them their dinner. But they are like Elijah in their intercessory prayer for us, and for others. Fire from heaven, very dramatic. Prayer for us, not so dramatic, because not only is it hidden from our sight, we also cannot tell directly what effect their prayers have had on our lives, our souls, our health, or faith, and our profession as Christians. One day, if we remain faithful, we shall know how their prayers for us have provided us with the oil of God's grace, like the widow's jar which never ran dry. But until that day, we are so very glad that they labor on our behalf and for many others as well.

Their vocation is not highly regarded by much of society today, where so many see no value in prayer or life of quiet retirement before the presence of God. In our day, people more often seek excitement, stimulation, pleasure and activity—in a sense, rather like the Israelites of the prophet's day. They want new beliefs, new ideas, a different way of living based on personal desires rather than a relationship with the living God. They may not pray to Baal, but they surely want to have a ball. Our sisters stand in contrast to all that, they stand in witness for us and for the world to the truth of God Who calls us to His own divine life. And so today, dear sisters, we thank you most sincerely for following your prophetic vocation so sincerely these many, many years, for helping to remind us of the deep need we all have to pray even when we ignore it so often because we let a hundred distractions occupy us instead of the love of our Lord. Thank you for so faithfully sharing your lives and your love with us. We pray for you now, especially today, and may the Lord hear us on your behalf. Thanks for showing us the beauty of gray—thanks for reminding us of the greatness of God!