For some time now, the First Readings at Mass have been following the prophet Elijah, arguably the most righteous person in the Old Testament. He has lived a long life, been at the center of many dramatic events, and has trained a replacement, young Elisha. But now, Elijah’s time is over, and God is about to take him up into heaven, and everybody knows it (2 Kings 2:1, 6-14).
When it happens, it will be an event such as no one has ever seen or experienced. Elijah is the only person in the whole Bible who visibly ascends to heaven without dying first. (Sure, we know that the Blessed Virgin was assumed into heaven, but no one witnessed the event.) We watch as he is scooped up in a great whirlwind, with chariot and horses of fire. This is a world-class miracle, entirely unique, that vindicates Elijah’s whole prophetic career.
He could use some public vindication, since Elijah is almost always in opposition with the powers that be: Ahab, king of Israel, and his queen, Jezebel, who would like to see the contrary prophet dead. He is also in opposition with most of the other prophets in the land of Israel, who are content to serve the royals and the gods (or idols) they worship (sounds like today, doesn’t it?). In a word, Elijah has more than a few powerful enemies.
So you’d expect it to be a major public event when God vindicates the true prophet. Yet it seems that only one person sees Elijah’s fiery ascent: his disciple, the apprentice prophet Elisha. A single witness, and he is not even an influential person, just a kid, really, the young man who calls Elijah “my father.”
It is a long walk that these two take together, in the final days, as they journey from one region or town to the next. Elijah is trying to slip away, to be alone when God takes him. “Stay here,” he says to Elisha at Gilgal; “God is sending me to Bethel,” a couple of days’ journey away. And Elisha flat-out refuses to be left behind: “As God lives and you yourself live, I am not leaving you!” (2 Kings 2:2).
The scene is repeated several times, until at last Elijah realizes why the young man won’t let him go: because there is something this disciple still needs from the master. “So ask me [Elisha], what can I do for you?” “Let a double share of your spirit come to me,” the young prophet answers (2 Kings 2:9).
To translate that request into language we can more readily understand: “I want to be devoted to God, as fully as you are — a person whose whole life is shaped and guided by faith. I have been your disciple; now, my father, give me your legacy. Share with me the spirit of God that I see in you.”
I confess that before working on this Reflection, I never paid much attention to this poignant scene that brings an end to Elijah’s stormy story. I always have focused on the miraculous scene of the fiery horses and chariot, on the whirlwind, on Elijah being taken to heaven without dying first. Until now.
One day Elijah saw the young man Elisha plowing a field on his parents’ farm. Elijah literally walks up to Elisha and threw his prophet’s mantle over him. Then Elisha up and followed after him and became his disciple (1 Kings 19:19-21). Kind of like what happened with the disciples of Jesus! As far as we know, the two were strangers to each other, yet Elijah glimpsed something in this youth that no one had seen before, and Elisha had the courage to accept the prophet’s call, little though he could have understood it.
We don’t know how long these two were bound together in holy friendship — was it years, or perhaps just a few intense months? We don’t know. We don’t need to know, because it is the depth, not the duration, of the friendship that matters. They are together long enough so that when Elijah is taken up, he is able to pass on to the younger prophet Elisha the spiritual legacy of a new self, a self that is wholly oriented to God. That is who Elijah was, and who Elisha eventually grew to be under his tutelage: a self, wholly oriented to God.
You don’t have to be someone of Elijah’s spiritual stature in order to pass on something of real substance through holy friendship. Whatever form it assumes, holy friendship involves these three things:
- the commitment to be available and consistent, to listen carefully to someone over time;
- the spiritual imagination to glimpse new possibility in someone else; and
- the courage to be open to new possibility for yourself, courage that comes from beginning to trust God, and beginning to trust how another person sees you.
I wonder what might be the form of friendship into which God is calling you, particularly at this time. Is it with someone more experienced than you in the journey of faith, who can guide you in identifying your gifts and your direction? Or is it perhaps with someone just starting out, who needs your companionship to take a few small steps? Is your holy friend someone who needs you to name a gift you see in her, which she does not yet have the confidence to claim? Or is it a group of people engaged in a ministry to which you could contribute, and now it is time to offer yourself?
You might be called into holy friendship with other Christians, or perhaps with someone outside the church. I have many holy friends who are Muslim, Protestant, even Hindu. In each case, we stand together, united and embraced within the unfathomable mystery of God.
If you are wondering where the call to holy friendship may be for you at this time, then look for where you sense a new possibility beginning to show itself. Right now, it may be only a glimmering: a faint hope or stirring you feel in yourself, a yearning you sense in someone else. Yet those glimmerings have God potential. They are bits of light, the light of Christ, with which God is seeking to penetrate our darkness, our dullness, our confusion, our solitariness, our self-absorption.
So follow the light, that it may draw each of us deeper into holy friendship with one another, and at the same time, closer to God.
May God Bless You and Grant You His Peace!