Lo, I am sending you Elijah
the Tishbite before the great and glorious Day of the Lord comes. He will turn
a father’s heart to his son, and people’s hearts to their neighbors, lest on
coming I strike the earth severely (vv. 5–6). It is an index of God’s clemency and longsuffering that
Elijah the Tishbite will in due course shine forth and foretell to people
throughout the world the time when Christ will come. The Son, in fact, will
descend as Judge in the glory of the God and Father, with angels attending him,
will sit “on the throne of his glory” to judge the world in righteousness, and
will render to all according to their works. Since we bear many sins, however,
it is of help that the divinely inspired prophet comes in advance, encouraging
harmony in those on earth, so that when all are joined in unity through faith,
and have renounced their involvement in depravity, they may opt for doing good
and thus be saved when the Judge arrives. Blessed John the Baptist anticipated
him, therefore, by coming “with the spirit and power of Elijah”; but just as he
preached the message, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths,”
so too the divinely inspired Elijah announced of him, at that time when he was
near and had not yet come, that he would judge the world in righteousness.
Today some people disagree: a father is at odds with his son, a son
with his father; one believes in Christ, another is in the ranks of the
unbelievers; some are distinguished by love of one another, whereas others are
divided by hostility and implacable anger and enmity over every matter in the
world. The prophet will bring about a restoration, uniting in one (625) faith
those long divided and turning people’s
hearts to their neighbors, lest on coming I strike the earth severely, that
is, completely and utterly. Do you see, then, the clemency of the Lord of all?
He encourages in advance people on earth, adjuring them, as it were, through
the voice of Elijah that the Judge will come, his purpose being that those
living on earth at that time will reform their life by a turn for the better,
and thus will not fall foul of the harsh Judge, who dispatches the guilty to
fire and exterior darkness, but rather will hear, “Come, you blessed of my
Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the
world.” (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Twelve Prophets
[trans. Robert C. Hill; The Fathers of the Church 124; Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 2012], 342-43)
