NOTES for Mal 3:1-6

Whom does Malachi mean when he speaks of the messenger of the covenant (the ‘angel of the covenant’)? The Book of Malachi gives no answer to this question. We can only conjecture what the prophet is speaking of. One thing is clear: something must happen before the Messiah comes. Someone must appear who will prepare God's people spiritually to receive the coming Messiah. Whether this is an angel or a human being is not so important. What matters is the preparation itself. And judging by the prophet's words, quite serious preparation is needed. In describing it, Malachi uses the language of traditional prophetic symbolism. Its meaning is clear: the people must be purified and spiritually renewed. Otherwise they cannot meet the Messiah.

The Gospel accounts of John the Baptist are written in such a way that it is hard not to recognise this messenger of the covenant in him. He is not an angel but a human being. Yet he does precisely what Malachi describes. John himself, however, says that the people's true purification still lies ahead. Nevertheless, he calls the people to repentance, cleansing from sin and conversion. Like Malachi, he understands that no one is pure and ready to meet the Messiah. John calls the Pharisees and Sadducees, who deep down consider themselves to be so, a ‘brood of vipers’.

This is not abuse but a statement of fact. John is clearly alluding to the serpent who once, in the Garden of Eden, tempted the first human beings with the illusory possibility of living without God. And a person who regards righteousness as a property or quality of their nature, even an acquired quality, makes the same mistake. There are no people in the world who are pure and free from sin, not because it is impossible to be freed from sin and its consequences, but because fallen humanity cannot help sinning.

John, unlike those same Pharisees, understands this. So does Malachi, who speaks of the need to purify the people. One cannot become righteous by nature, at least not before that nature itself has been completely transformed. But one can abide in a state of righteousness. That means a state of constant resistance to one's own sin. A state of constant purification. Until the journey ends in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom, where there will no longer be any place for sin.

In the Gospel we read about how the infant Jesus is brought to the temple for the first time, what happens there, and what is said about it. Knowing the Gospel story and remembering how throughout the past twenty centuries Jesus has remained "a sign that is spoken against," we need not be surprised by anything. The prophet Malachi brings us back to what escapes us against the background of the heavy words of Simeon's prophecy. The Savior's first appearance in the temple is described this way: "the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple." Everything here is unsettling. Does a person know what kind of God he is seeking? Are we seeking the Child who constantly causes contradiction and strife? You are waiting for God, and suddenly a little Child is brought in, and you stand before the need to accept that this very Child is the light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Israel.

Speaking of the messenger of the covenant—the ‘angel of the covenant’—Malachi associates the renewal of the people before the Messiah's coming specifically with him. His words echo those of another prophet, who will have to meet the Messiah and bear witness to His coming. This prophecy somewhat changed the then-established understanding of the Messiah and the messianic Kingdom. Traditional messianic expectations were based on the prophecies of the pre-exilic prophets. The Exile was seen as punishment for the sins committed in the pre-exilic age, above all the sin of apostasy.

Having turned to God and remained unconditionally faithful to Him, the community in exile hoped that God, once He had cleansed the people of sin, would allow them to return to the land of their fathers and begin a new life there with a clean slate. And it seemed that the return already promised by Jeremiah had taken place: the years of exile were over, the people lived in their own land, and although they had had to abandon hopes of independence, life in Judaea followed the laws of the Torah and sacrifices were offered regularly in the rebuilt Temple.

Only the Messiah still did not come. Against this background, Malachi's prophecy of a new purification awaiting the people appeared. Malachi's prophecies were recalled more than two centuries later, when persecution of the Synagogue began, organised by the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes. Many then thought that this persecution was the very purification of which the prophet had spoken. But then John the Baptist appears—and repeats Malachi's words. So it is not a matter of persecution: it is not persecution that purifies the people, though times of persecution do reveal both the faithful and the apostates.

There is something else, and this ‘something’ is not the work of human hands or strength. Human nature must change, completely and irreversibly. With God's help, human efforts can limit sin; one can be cleansed of the consequences of a particular sin one has committed. But one cannot rid oneself of one's sinfulness, which manifests itself again and again in one way or another, despite all the efforts of someone striving to follow the path of righteousness.

Yet there is no place for sin in the Kingdom. And to enter it, human nature must change. It must be melted down like metal in the fire. And, like that metal, be purified of everything foreign to it. For the human being was originally created with sin foreign to its nature. Sin entered human nature and ate into it so deeply that it cannot be scrubbed away. But the human being can be created anew, renewed, and in that renewal the impurity will disappear. And the person will be pure. Pure and ready to take a step into the Kingdom.

In antiquity, in the time of the First, and maybe even of the Second Temple, there was in Israel a feast called "the day of the Lord". Probably, it was held in autumn, somewhere near the Jewish New Year and the feast of Yom Kippur, which in ancient times, and in our days is for the Jewish believers the day of Judgment and repentance.

And in the antiquity the day of the Lord was still as the day of the enthronement of the Lord, with which was connected the experience of the visions of the Throne of glory, of which the tradition with its roots leaves, probably, in deep antiquity, in the time of Salomon. And of course, this day, the day of the celebration of their God, the believers waited it as the day of their personal celebration, the day, when they will see together with their God the gentile world lying at their feet. And God will judge this world, which was formerly often hostile to His people.

The prophet sees the situation completely differently. He says: God will come when we do not expect Him; are you sure that His coming, His feast will be a feast for you too? Repeating in somehow what formerly, before even the captivity said Amos, Malachi reminds to those who listen to him: any meeting with God is a judgment in itself. Are you ready for the judgment? And can anybody be ready for the judgment?

To meet with God is at the same time joyful and horrible. Joyful because such meeting will delight those who seek for God; horrible because nobody can really be fully ready for such meeting. Insoluble antinomy, which only the Savior Himself is able to resolve. Of course, with our consent.