By Ron Bruni
This was more than a shift; it was a cultural wave, a large wave swelling far offshore, unseen and underestimated, that would eventually crash with unsuspected force against the rocky coastline of centuries-old expectations. Wisdom prepared Israel to imagine a Messiah who saves not by the sword, but by wisdom, justice, suffering, and self-giving love. This wave rolls right into today’s readings.
Tuesday of the Fourth Week of Advent
Malachi 3:1-4, 23-24
Luke 1:57-66
Today’s readings from Malachi, Psalm 24, and a passage from Luke’s Gospel, take us deep into the workshop of God, the place where he shapes history and, even more mysteriously, the human heart.
We often imagine God’s interventions as sudden flashes of the miraculous, with burning bushes, parted seas, and angelic voices. But today’s Scripture reveals a subtler, more unsettling truth: before God changes the world, he changes the human imagination. He prepares people who can recognize what he is doing. This preparation did not begin with Malachi or even with John the Baptist. It began centuries earlier in the Books of Wisdom in the Old Testament, a quiet revolution operating beneath the surface of Jewish thought.
For generations, Israel expected a Messiah who would be a warrior, conqueror, and throne restorer. But then, almost imperceptibly at first, the Wisdom Books introduced a new and destabilizing truth: the true ruler is not always the political king, but the one who embodies the justice and mind of God. The victory God desires is not military, but the triumph of righteousness. Malachi then makes this very profound statement: Suffering is not proof of divine absence; it may be the furnace that refines the just (Wisdom 3:6).
This was more than a shift; it was a cultural wave, a large wave swelling far offshore, unseen and underestimated, that would eventually crash with unsuspected force against the rocky coastline of centuries-old expectations. Wisdom prepared Israel to imagine a Messiah who saves not by the sword, but by wisdom, justice, suffering, and self-giving love. This wave rolls right into today’s readings.
Malachi stands where that wave begins to rise. He proclaims not a military general, but a refiner, a craftsman purifying his people like precious metal. Israel expected liberation from Rome or from foreign powers, but Malachi warns that the first liberation must be from the impurities within.
“Who can endure the day of his coming?”
Not because he is violent, but because his nearness exposes what we prefer to hide. Malachi’s wave keeps building: the Messiah will restore hearts, parent to child, child to parent. The kingdom begins in relationships before it manifests in politics.
If Malachi is the refiner, Psalm 25 is the metal that cries out, “teach me your ways.” The psalmist is not passive. He doesn’t ask for rescue alone; he asks for formation. “Make known to me your paths… Guide me… Teach me.”
This is a striking spiritual insight—the unprepared heart cannot recognize God even when he arrives. It must be taught to see rightly, taught humility, taught patience, and taught wisdom. We tend to pray for outcomes; the psalmist prays for clarity. We ask God to reform difficulties; the psalmist asked God to reveal direction. And then a promise, “the friendship of the Lord is with those who fear him.” Friendship: the rarest and most intimate of biblical metaphors. God doesn’t merely refine us; he befriends us.
Then, Luke shows us preparation at its most dramatic: the birth of John the Baptist, the human embodiment of Malachi’s prophecy. John arrives in a world unprepared for mercy, unprepared for a Messiah who will not resemble earlier expectations. His mission is not simply moral exhortation; it is recalibration. To teach people how to look for a different kind of king, a Lamb, not a warrior.
In the middle of the story, Zechariah, previously muted by God for doubting His proclamation, suddenly has his voice returned when he finally aligns his will with God’s promise. His transformation is the micro story of Israel’s macro story: a people long muted by doubt begins to speak hope again. The neighbors are stunned: “What then, will this child be?” A question asked in awe but also in fear, for when God prepares something new, we lose control of the old.
So, what does this mean for us today? These readings challenge an assumption we often hold without noticing. We think that God should prepare circumstances. Scripture shows God preparing hearts. We pray: fix my family, fix the world, fix the church, fix our politics. And God replies I am beginning with you.
What if the transformation we long for, in our homes, our nation, our culture, cannot begin until God has first refined the stubborn metal within us? What if the most radical preparation God could make is not to change them, but to change me?
Malachi warns that purification is uncomfortable. Psalm 25 insists that guidance requires humility. Luke shows that God’s preparation often confounds our expectations. So, the question for us remains: are we willing to be prepared? Prepared to listen rather than react? Prepared to be taught rather than remain certain? Prepared to have parts of us “melted down” so the actual image of God can emerge?
This is the spiritual work of Advent, of discipleship, of life. God asks us to enter the “furnace of purification,” not as victims but as precious metal in the hands of the master.