I don't always get a chance, or sometimes I simply forget, to read the weekly message that Pope Benedict XVI delivers during his Wednesday general audience. But I did manage to read last week's message (June 15) and am happy I did so.
In recent weeks the pope has been speaking on prayer, something he continued in this teaching by focusing on the prophet Elijah and his prayer atop Mt. Carmel. Elijah, the only surviving prophet of the Lord, had challenged the 450 priests of the false god, Baal, as well as another 400 priests of the god Asherah. It's a wonderful passage in which Elijah, confident in his role as intercessor, is determined to bring the people back to the worship of the one, true God [1 Kings 18]. Elijah had predicted that God would respond to his offering with fire, but that the false gods in their impotence would be silent.The pope contrasts the prayer of the priests of Baal with those of Elijah. His description of the "prayers" offered by the false prophets is worth repeating here in its entirety:
"The prophets of Baal, in fact, cried aloud, worked themselves up, danced and leaped about and falling into a state of ecstasy, even going so far as to cut themselves, 'with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them' [1 Kings 18:28]. They had recourse to themselves in order to call on their god, trusting to their own devices to provoke his answer. In this way the idol’s deceptive reality was revealed: it was thought up by human beings as something that could be used, that could be managed with their own efforts, to which they could gain access through their own strength and their own vital force. Worship of an idol, instead of opening the human heart to Otherness, to a liberating relationship that permits the person to emerge from the narrow space of his own selfishness to enter the dimensions of love and of reciprocal giving, shuts the person into the exclusive and desperate circle of self-seeking. And the deception is such that in worshiping an idol people find themselves forced to extreme actions, in the vain attempt to subject it to their own will. For this reason the prophets of Baal went so far as to hurt themselves, to wound their bodies, in a dramatically ironic action: in order to get an answer, a sign of life out of their god, they covered themselves with blood, symbolically covering themselves with death."
The pope then describes the prayer of Elijah:"Elijah’s prayerful attitude was entirely different. He asked the people to draw close, thereby involving it in his action and his supplication. The purpose of the challenge he addressed to the prophets of Baal was to restore to God the people which had strayed, following idols; therefore he wanted Israel to be united with him, to become a participator in and a protagonist of his prayer and of everything that was happening. Then the prophet built an altar, using, as the text says, 'twelve stones, according to the number of the tribes of the sons of Jacob, to whom the word of the Lord came, saying: "Israel shall be your name’" [v. 31]. Those stones represented the whole of Israel and are the tangible memorial of the story of the choice, predilection and salvation of which the people had been the object. The liturgical gesture of Elijah had crucial importance; the altar was a sacred place that indicated the Lord’s presence, but those stones of which it was made represented the people which now, through the prophet’s mediation was symbolically placed before God, it had become an 'altar', a place of offering and sacrifice...The words of his invocation are full of meaning and faith: 'O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, let it be known this day 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' [vv. 36-37]. Elijah turned to the Lord, calling him the God of the Fathers, thus implicitly calling to mind the divine promises and the story of the choosing and Covenant that bound the Lord indissolubly to his people."
Of course, as we all know, the false gods, the idols, could not respond and God vindicated Himself when "the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces; and they said, ‘The Lord he is God; the Lord, he is God’” [vv. 38-39].Pope Benedict concludes his teaching by reminding us what we can learn from this great event in history:
"First of all the priority of the first Commandment is called into question: worship God alone. Whenever God disappears, man falls into the slavery of idolatry, as the totalitarian regimes demonstrated in our time, and as the various forms of nihilism that make man dependent on idols, on idolatry, also demonstrate; they enslave him. Secondly, the primary aim of prayer is conversion, the flame of God that transforms our heart and enables us to see God and so to live in accordance with God and live for others. And the third point. The Fathers tell us that this history of a prophet is prophetic too if, they say, it foreshadows the future, the future Christ; it is a step on the journey towards Christ. And they tell us that here we see God’s true fire: the love that guided the Lord even to the cross, to the total gift of himself. True worship of God, therefore, is giving oneself to God and to men and women, true worship is love. And true worship of God does not destroy but renews, transforms. Of course, the fire of God, the fire of love burns, transforms, purifies, but in this very way does not destroy but rather creates the truth of our being, recreates our heart. And thus, truly alive through the grace of the fire of the Holy Spirit, of love of God, we are worshipers in spirit and in truth."
To read Pope Benedict's entire message, click here: Audience, June 15
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