When you look at the first reading, you can see Elijah in one of his darkest moments. As you see, he screams out to God demanding that the Lord strike him dead, lamenting that he, as he says, is no better than his ancestors. Obviously, you can take this passage and think what precedes it is a huge failure that led him to feel he was no longer worthy to be called prophet or even a child of God. In fact, what preceded this was one of the most powerful moments in the history of the Jews and one of the great successes of Elijah the prophet. It was, what we may call, a theophany a manifestation of God. So, how could that moment precede this moment of total despair? Simple: what Elijah calls failure God saw success.
Remember Elijah’s time. The current monarchs are Ahab and his Queen Jezebel. The Lexham Bible Dictionary describes Ahab as an evil ruler who perpetuated idolatry in the nation of Israel. Against Jewish law, he marries Jezebel a Phoenician woman and powerful queen. Usually such marriages had a political component and Phoenicia was of course a nation of sailors, which means shippers and money for merchants. Imagine her to be a severe bully of not only her people but of her husband. Remember, Jezebel was so evil that to this day her name is synonymous with: “the most evil of women.”
She fostered the worship of the idol Ba’al, which was a cult of prosperity.
Remember why idolatry is the worst of all sins. Each of us follow the direction where our idols lead us. Our whole culture is an outgrowth of our idols. So idolatry will lead the culture down the wrong path and if God is the source of all good, an idolatrous culture can only leads us to that which is not of God. In the case of an Israel led by Ahab and Jezebel it is a world of corruption and oppression.
Elijah, called by God to stop this idolatry ended up setting up a kind of duel between Ba’al and God himself. It is a comical affair only to the point that obviously God manifests his presence and Ba’al never shows up, because, of course, he does not exist
Once this happens, Elijah has all the prophets of Ba’al executed immediately. Jezebel warns Elijah in her intense fury that because he has done this, he will be dead within twenty four hours. Elijah panics and runs. When he stops, is where today’s passage picks up.
He considers himself a failure because in his terror of Jezebel he ran away.
There is a lesson in this, that is important. First understand that we work for God, by our baptism, we become prophets for the Lord and share in the ministry of Jesus on the Earth. We work for all that is good, but evil seeks the destruction of the good, so in our fight, we may encounter evil in the flesh. This evil is chances are not like what you see in demonic possession movies, it is instead that manipulative power that does great evil and calls it good and beneficial.
Recently, one of the leaders of congress dismissed the whole sale of abortion issue as a distraction. This is what evil looks like, it looks like that. Turning a blind eye to a form of inhuman evil and calling it a distraction, or worse yet, calling it good. Jezebel would be proud. However, when evil is fostered to such a powerful level it becomes quite scary, it is human to be afraid of the effects of such evil. This is what Elijah does, even though he is a powerful prophet, his humanness overtakes him and he runs away in fear feeling a total failure.
However, where we may see failure, God may see success.
If you take your faith seriously and live your faith, even though you may be upset at the way for example your children do not practice their faith, you plant seeds. you continue to pray for them. You ask God to take over. Where you see failure, God may see success.
This is what happens with Elijah. He looking through his own eyes sees himself as a failure who succumbs to fear. God sees one who came to the limits of his humanity against an evil that the prophet could not overcome. God sees Elijah fulfill God’s task for him and now the Lord could step in. So He does. He leads Elijah to Mount Horeb and prepares him for the end of his days, as his work is completed.Elijah felt alone before the great evil that was Jezebel. The Lord informs him at Horeb that his work bore fruit, there are now 7000 who are faithful to the Lord and he will raise up his people from those 7000.
Elijah goes and anoints new leaders who will replace Ahab and Jezebel and appoints his own successor Elisha. Meanwhile, both Ahab and Jezebel die in a most notable way. Elijah cursed both of them that the dogs will lick up their blood. That is in fact what happens. Ahab is killed in battle and the dogs lick up his blood from the chariot. That is the equivalent of saying the dogs will eat your soul. It is a terrible curse. As for Jezebel, she is also killed and left out in a field where her body is trampled. It is decided that when all is said and done, she was still a queen and deserves a queen’s burial. So they go to retrieve her body only to find just her skull, the rest as consumed by the dogs. Both succumbed to Elijah’s curse.
The lesson is simple, leave the results up to God, we must be faithful to Him and do His will, be faithful in prayer and seek to be the Catholics we have been called to be, even when it is painful to do so. We will have great successes and great failures, but only our perseverance is what matters. For God takes our failures as well as our successes and uses them for His glory and to defeat our enemies.