The blog follows the daily bible readings of the Catholic Church 

Isaiah 41: 13-20

13 For I, the Lord, your God, I grasp you by your right hand; I tell you, ‘Do not be afraid, I shall help you.’

14 Do not be afraid, Jacob, you worm! You little handful of Israel! I shall help you, declares Yahweh; your redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.

15 Look, I am making you into a threshing-sledge, new, with double teeth; you will thresh and beat the mountains to dust and reduce the hills to straw.

16 You will winnow them and the wind will carry them off, the gale will scatter them; whereas you will rejoice in the Lord, will glory in the Holy One of Israel.

 The transformation

I shall open up rivers on the barren heights

17 The oppressed and needy search for water, and there is none, their tongue is parched with thirst. I, the Lord, shall answer them, I, the God of Israel, shall not abandon them.

18 I shall open up rivers on barren heights and water-holes down in the ravines; I shall turn the desert into a lake and dry ground into springs of water.

19 I shall plant the desert with cedar trees, acacias, myrtles and olives; in the wastelands I shall put cypress trees, plane trees and box trees side by side;

20 so that people may see and know, so that they may all observe and understand that the hand of the Lord has done this, that the Holy One of Israel has created it.

Matthew 11: 11-15  

11 Jesus said, ‘In truth I tell you, of all the children born to women, there has never been anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of Heaven is greater than he.

12 Since John the Baptist came, up to this present time, the kingdom of Heaven has been subjected to force and the forceful are taking it by storm.

13 Because it was towards John that all the prophecies of the prophets and of the Law were leading;

14 and he, if you will believe me, is the Elijah who was to return.

15 Anyone who has ears should listen! 

The wonderfully eloquent words of the “prophet of the exile” speak first of the Lord as the goel (redeemer), the family member who will protect the widow and children after the death of a father. God will take on this role for Israel. There is a robustness in the imagery drawn from agriculture, threshing sledge with double teeth, beat to dust and so on, which tells a people used to slavery, that they will become tough opponents, that no obstacle will easily stand in their way.

 This language is balanced by the delicacy and tenderness of the passage that follows which uses the imagery of a renewed paradise to depict God’s justice to the oppressed. 

Out of what experience does the prophet put these words in the mouth of God?

 Out of deep knowledge of the tradition of the people, out of stubborn faith in the God of the ancestors, yes, these experiences are part of the answer. But there must be more that moves a person to these extraordinary utterances: a sense of personal vocation, the taste of necessary words on the tongue, words which cannot easily be dismissed by others, but are heard with the fear that is the beginning of wisdom.

 Jesus is reported as pointing to Jewish belief that Elijah the prophet would come back to prepare the people for the Messiah, the leader who would establish God’s kingdom in the world. He said that John the Baptist had fulfilled this role of forerunner, which is why the least inside the kingdom is greater than he, who only stood at the door.

 I have altered the Jerusalem Bible translation in verse 12 substituting “force and forceful” for “violence and violent” because I think the meaning of Jesus’s words is that the imminence of the kingdom demands such a change of life, that only the forceful have been able to seize the moment and respond.                                                                                               

The ability to speak the necessary word, the forcefulness needed to take hold of God-given justice, can these be ours, today?