The Book of the Holy Rosary: Part II, Chapter III. Scripture Types of the First Sorrowful Mystery: The Prayer of Elias for the Dead Child; The Weariness of Elias for the Sins of the People
1. The prayer of Elias for the restoration to life of the dead child of the widowed mother.
Jesus retired from His disciples to pray, and St Anselm, as we have seen, teaches us that He went to pray for His own resurrection from the dead. He was about to commit Himself to death, and He prayed to Him who was able to save Him from death, that He would not leave “His soul in hell, neither suffer His flesh to see corruption.” What was there that depended upon His resurrection from the dead? Let St Paul answer us: “He was delivered up for our sins, and He rose again for our justification” (Rom. iv. 25). In His resurrection from the dead, the rising again of the lost world, dead in trespasses and sin, to the life of grace was bound up. In praying, therefore, for His resurrection from the dead, He was praying for the restoration of the life of faith to the world, which had lost its life; for this restoration of the world to life was most intimately bound up in His resurrection.
These reflections conduct us to the circumstance in the life of the prophet Elias, which St Augustine, as we shall see, treats as the figure of the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Olives.
“And it came to pass,” the Scripture relates, “after this that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick, and the sickness was very grievous, so that there was no breath left in him. And she said to Elias, ‘What have I to do with thee, thou man of God? art thou come to me that my iniquities should be remembered, and that thou shouldst kill my son?’ And Elias said to her, ‘Give me thy son.’ And he took him out of her bosom, and carried him into the upper chamber where he abode, and laid him upon his own bed. And he cried to the Lord, and said, ‘O Lord my God, hast Thou afflicted also the widow, with whom I am after a sort maintained, so as to kill her son?’ And he stretched and measured himself upon the child three times, and cried to the Lord and said, ‘O Lord my God, let the soul of this child, I beseech Thee, return into his body.’ And the Lord heard the voice of Elias, and the soul of the child returned to him, and he revived. And Elias took the child, and brought him down from the upper chamber to the house below, and delivered him to his mother, and said to her, ‘Behold, thy son liveth.’ And the woman said to Elias, ‘Now by this I know that thou art a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in thy mouth is true.’” (3 Kings xvii. 17–24).
“The son of the widow,” says St Augustine, commenting on this Scripture, “lay dead; for the son of the Church, the people of the Gentiles, lay dead in innumerable trespasses and sins. At the prayer of Elias the son of the widow is raised up; at the coming of Christ, the son of the Church, that is, the Christian people, is brought back from the prison-house of death. Elias bows himself down in his prayer, and the son of the widow is brought to life again. Christ falls to the earth in His Passion, and the Christian people is raised up to life. For in that Christ fell to the ground three times, the mystery of the Holy Trinity is shown; for the widow’s son, that is, the people of the Gentiles, was not raised to life by the Father without the Son, nor by the Father and Son without the Holy Ghost, but by the joint act of the whole undivided Trinity. The same mystery is still further shown in the Sacrament of Baptism, in which, by a threefold immersion, the old Adam is washed away in order that the new man may be raised up” (St Augustine, Serm. 201).
2. The weariness and agony of Elias for the sins of his people a figure of the weariness and agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus, as we have seen, would not put away from Himself any of the sufferings which He foresaw that His Gospel might hereafter bring upon His faithful disciples, and therefore He was graciously pleased to endure the agony and dread to which His soul was subject in the Garden of Gethsemane. He willed to be like unto us in all things, sin only except; and He has most graciously despised the shame of being seen struggling with the fear of death, that He might thereby strengthen all His faithful people in their last agony and struggle with death, in whatever form it might come upon them. Jesus saw Himself about to die as a Victim, sacrificed by the wickedness of the world. Hence His soul struggled with the sacrifice required from Him: “If it be possible, let this chalice pass from me.” “Perchance,” says St Paul, “for a good man one would dare to die.” But Jesus was required to submit to death at the hands of a wicked world for its life. A figure or similitude of this gracious agony befell the prophet Elias.
The Scripture relates, “And Achab told Jezabel all that Elias had done, how he had slain all the prophets of Baal with the sword. And Jezabel sent a messenger to Elias, saying, ‘Such and such things may the gods do to me, and add still more, if by this hour to-morrow I make not thy life as the life of one of them.’ Then Elias was afraid, and rising up he went whithersoever he had a mind: and he came to Bersabee of Juda, and left his servant there. And he went forward one day’s journey into the wilderness, and sat down under a juniper-tree, and requested for his soul that he might die, and said, ‘It is enough for me, Lord; take away my soul: for I am no better than my fathers.’ And he cast himself down, and slept in the shadow of the juniper-tree: and behold, an angel of the Lord touched him, and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’ He looked, and behold there was at his head a hearth-cake, and a vessel of water: and he ate and drank, and he fell asleep again. And the angel of the Lord came again the second time, and touched him, and said to him, ‘Arise, eat; for thou hast yet a great way to go.’ And he arose, and ate and drank, and walked in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights, unto the Mount of God, Horeb” (3 Kings xix.)
Achab, the apostate Jewish King, tells his idolatrous Gentile wife Jezabel of the zeal of Elias against her prophets, and Jezabel sends Elias a message to prepare for death. The apostate Synagogue pours its tales of the zeal of Jesus against the crimes of the fallen world into the ears of the idolatrous civil power, and Jesus knows that His hour is come to be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles.
Elias falls into an agony of fear, and dreading to be given up into the hands of a wicked woman, escapes for his life into the wilderness. Here he is ready to give up his soul into the hands of God, but not into the hands of a woman. For, as the Scripture says, “there is no head worse than the head of a serpent, and there is no anger above the anger of a woman” (Ecclus. xxv. 23). It is better “to dwell with a lion and a dragon than to be in the power of a wicked woman.” He therefore prays that this chalice might pass from him: “Lord, do Thou take away my soul.” Jesus was about to be given up into the hands of the fallen world, of which the wicked woman Jezabel is the figure; and He prays that, if it be possible, the chalice may pass from Him. Hereupon an angel appears to Elias, and says to him, “Arise and eat.” Elias obeys, and falls asleep. And the angel touched him again, and says, “Arise and eat; for thou hast yet a great way to go. And he arose and went forty days and forty nights, unto Horeb, the Mount of God.” So in like manner an angel appears to Jesus, strengthening Him to drink of the chalice His Heavenly Father had given to Him. Jesus obeys, and drinks of it. He falls asleep on the Cross; and behold, again an angel comes down from Heaven and rolls away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre; and Jesus rises from the dead, and continues forty days and forty nights walking and conversing with His disciples, till He ascends up from them to His throne on high, to sit in the Heavens at the right hand of the Eternal Father, upon the true Horeb, the Mount of God. THE HOLY SCRIPTURE NARRATIVE.