Saint Elisha, Prophet - From a sermon of St Ambrose, bishop

Saint Elisha, Prophet

From a sermon of St Ambrose, bishop

The healing of the waters, a type of the Church

What shall we say about the merits of Elisha? The first thing we praise him for is that he wanted to surpass his father [Elijah] in grace, for he asked for more than Elijah was able to bestow. Although he was greedy in his request, he was nonetheless worthy to have it granted. For while he demanded more from his father than Elijah had to give, through his own merits he enabled him to bestow more than he possessed.

  Following his master’s ascent, when Elisha arrived in Jericho, he was invited by the townspeople to remain with them; they said: this is an excellent site for the town, except that the water is bad and causes sterility. He then asked for a clay jar, filled it with salt, and went to the place where the water was coming up out of the ground; he threw it into the water saying: “Thus says the Lord: ‘I have purified these waters; never again shall death or sterility come from them.’” And those waters remain pure even to this day.

  So we see how remarkable Elisha’s merits are: in response to the citizens’ hospitality his very first gift to them was great fruitfulness. For by healing the water, he provided for their posterity. What he did was not for the benefit of any one person, or any one family: it was for all the people of the entire city. Had he delayed, they would all have been sterile and grown old without descendants, and the city would have been left deserted. Thus, by healing the waters Elisha healed the people; and by blessing the spring, he provided them as it were with a fountain of life. For just as through his blessing good water came forth from the unseen veins in the earth, so too from the seclusion of their wombs mothers gave birth to healthy children.

  For Elisha did not bless only the water that was already flowing into the spring’s basin, but rather all the water without distinction which was yet to flow little by little from the earth’s hidden moisture even until now. As Scripture has it, Elisha blessed the place where the water was coming up out of the earth, to indicate that it was the flowing water rather than the basin of the spring that he had sanctified. Thus, as the Apostle Paul says, all these things happened as signs; let us try to discover, therefore, the truth contained in this sign.

  The church is the sterile city which, before the coming of Christ, suffered from sterility due to the pollution of the waters – that is, to the idolatry of the gentiles – and was unable to bring forth children for God. But when Christ came and took on the fragile clay of the human body, he healed the pollution of the waters; that is, he banished the idolatries of the gentiles, and immediately the church, which had been sterile, began to be fertile.

  Thus the Apostle also says: Rejoice, you barren one who bear no children; break into song, you stranger to the pains of childbirth! For many are the children of the wife deserted-far more than of her who has a husband! For Christ brought to birth more children from the church which had been sterile than he had from the synagogue which had been fertile.

---