Elijah the Zealous and Adversity

Dr. Michel E. Abs

Secretary General of the Middle East Council of Churches

It was just like yesterday, although  nearly two millennia have passed between the time of Elijah the zealous  and our lives today.

Mar Elias the living Saint, as it is commonly referred to in our country, represents a unique model of saints-name and occupies a special place in the popular memory, as there is no neighborhood in our region without a monastery, a church, or a shrine named after him.

His biography is rich and varied, filled with events. We find it in theology books as well as in religious education books in schools, and we hear it in folk tales as well.

His feast day is special, it comes first in the summer holidays and is celebrated by the people, regardless of their religions, in a distinctive way, and is accompanied by popular traditions that vary according to the region or the celebrants.

Mar Elias came at a time of intense events, abundant in sins, full of misfortunes. However he did not resort to silence or complacency, but rather drew up the sword of truth and began chasing falsehood.

Hence, the popular honor he receives: people do not tolerate falsehood and honor everyone who fights it, especially if the one who fights falsehood is exposed to various forms of torment, persecution and hostility.

This defender of truth lived for many years in the wilderness and wore a gown of skin and a girdle of leather, he was deprived of food and water, facts which are considered as a honorable and conclusive evidence of his unlimited belonging to the Creator and his boundless zeal for the Lord, God of the Sabaoth.

To be targeted for murder and become a homeless in the wilderness without retreating from his faith, this is one of the signs of redemption.

The evil that Elijah the zealous fought with the zeal of his faith, is still present among us, roaming our diaries and our social, economic, political and even family life. We must  consequently improve our discernment lest we fall into the furnace of evil. We must also have the courage to call things by their names, without fear or dread of blame.

This is the lesson that we must draw from the biography of Elijah the Zealous.

Gods have multiplied again in our time, without their worshipers daring to erect statues to them. From self-worship to the nulling of the ego of others, to money worship, to power worship, to leader worship, to technology, to the worship of outdated traditions, “gods” swarm into the life of modern man who, by losing the way to salvation, thinks he has gained the world and being engulfed to excess in his slavery does not realize that he has lost himself.

We, who believe in a better human being, who carries the divine and social values ​​that laid down human society and organized it, are in a fierce war with who and/or  what will lead  us down into the darkness of the universe. A large part of humanity has forgotten salvation and has gone as far as to make modern society more like a primitive jungle in which the strong prey on the weak and people are not sympathetic to each other...except for the w few who are still under the protection of the faith of salvation, the opposite elite, the yeast of righteousness.

Sad is the contemporary person today; he owns everything whereas he has lost happiness and peace of mind. The need for various forms of medical and psychological treatments is increasing day by day, and the homes for the elderly, orphans, children of dysfunctional families, mental patients and other forms of social disabilities are increasing.

“This impotence exists because our love is powerless,” said Metropolitan Elias Odeh, pastor of the  diocese of Beirut during a humanitarian campaign in 1982. Yes, our love is still impotent, rather it is getting more and more powerless and what is to come is greater.

In his homily on the feast of the Prophet Elijah, the absent Shepherd, who is always present among us, Metropolitan Paul Yazigi, gives us analyzes and comparisons that make our understanding of the message of the zealous Prophet Elijah realistic and make this understanding a challenge for us in our daily lives as well as in our relations with each other and in the choices we make.

Metropolitan Paul says, describing the capricious human soul that tends to collect contradictions for the sake of easy choices in life: “We are in a world in which the love of wheat is mixed with weeds, and truth with falsehood, and often we want to reconcile the first with the second and to combine the two contradictory extremes. As a consequence, we oscillate between the spirit of Elijah and the currents of the world, between truth and falsehood, between essence and appearance.”

Then, the absent metropolitan addresses human subservience, either because of cowardice, or because of interests, or out of the fear of sacrifice. He asserts, “We do not have the courage to say to falsehood that it is false, when it has some power over us, power perhaps from covetousness, authority, or social norms, etc... Moreover, because this confrontation needs a spirit that does not remain silent and a courage that accepts the cost, that is willing to pay the price notwithstanding how high it is, while the criterion for our choice is not victory, profit, or positions, but rather the Truth and the Truth only, because it is the precious pearl that we have found, so we sold everything we own and bought it."

To ward off misunderstandings, His Eminence addresses the definition of the concept of prophecy, cutting off the path of those who exploit weak souls or those of little faith. He affirms “a prophet is not a “clairvoyant” who reads receptors. This is the profession of magicians who read cups and interweave superstitions from the paths of the stars and all kinds of magic and sorcery.” For him, "The prophet, who is filled with the Spirit of God, understands the present in the light of his belief in the future. The Spirit of the Lord that dwells and moves in us makes us refuse to accept the present as it is. Rather, for us the present is only a pathway to achieve the future as we see, desire and strive for. And this future is nothing but the divine will for man."

Moreover, in the same sermon, the ever-present Metropolitan, in his hymns, sermons, and writings, touches upon an essential feature of our sick culture, which needs to undergo a radical change, since without that, we are in the midst of perdition. He says: "From this "prophetic perspective" of time, present and future, the believer sees corruption and emptiness that people sometimes get accustomed to, and that lurks in their relationship with God and with the other as well. Therefore, this spirit, the spirit of Truth, is exposed to the colors of hypocrisy in faith, and does not accept the separation between life and principles, between deeds and

sayings, between what we know and what we do! When the Spirit of God fills the heart, it

transforms the human being  into one indissoluble entity, so he believes, and this faith transforms him into “what he believes in.” Thus, faith becomes the head and works the body.

It is clear to us in this paragraph how the believer sees slavery in the modern era, and what many sociological and philosophical writings say on this matter. Corruption, hypocrisy, the schism between life and principles, the discrepancy between what we say and what we do, all these are forms of pathological hypocrisy that we live in our daily lives and that make our relationship with the Creator and with the creature fraught with various forms of behavioral diseases.

In a prayer in praise of the Mother of God in the church of the Patriarchal Monastery of Our Lady of Balamand in 2015, His Beatitude Patriarch John X stressed the concept of spiritual jihad, considering that its first fruit lies in “that man returns to himself, and becomes his own master so that sin does not prevail over him. Therefore, when we are baptized, we are liberated from sin, and this liberation is gained by a person who by believing in the Lord Christ, becomes a master over himself and not a slave."

Christianity is a war on slavery, rather on the “slavery” in which the civilization of modern society has placed him, so he becomes its captive instead of subjugating it to serve him in a universal human orientation.

In the same sermon, His Beatitude affirms, “The Lord Jesus loved us to a great extent, so He was incarnated for our salvation, in order to free us from slavery, because He wanted us free persons and lords, not slaves and tyrants. And man, out of ignorance, falls into sin and falls into his own passions. Sin takes possession of him, and he becomes attached to the thoughts that Sin dictates to him."

His Beatitude pointed to the necessity of “striving to adhere to everything that is good, with every good virtue, and by acts of kindness and righteousness,” considering that “one of the fruits of this endeavor is to return to the state of being free masters”, stressing that “the resurrection is within us”. When  we realize that we bear the resurrection in ourselves then we are enabled to be masters of all our actions, and we will be the children of the Resurrection, not the children of the Fall.

As sons of the Resurrection and masters of our fates, we have  a message to send to the exploiters of peoples, the deceivers of groups, the manipulators of the destinies of nations, the hoarders of world wealth, the monopolists of vital materials, those who are the threats to world peace, the trap setters and those who kill  souls before killing bodies.

Our message to them is: the Lord has given you the choice, so choose!