"Behold I send my Angel and he shall prepare the way before my face. And presently the Lord, Whom you seek, and the Angel of the testament, Whom you desire, shall come to His temple. Behold He comes, says the Lord of hosts. And who shall be able to think of the day of His coming? and who shall stand to see Him? for He is like a refining fire, and like the fuller's herb. And He shall sit refining and cleansing the silver, and He shall purify the sons of Levi, and shall refine them as gold, and as silver, and they shall offer sacrifices to the Lord in justice. And the sacrifice of Juda and of Jerusalem shall please the Lord, as in the days of old, and in the ancient years." - Malachi 3:1-4
Not only was the Messiah foreshadowed by the prophets in the general way, but details of His life gradually peered through the darkness. Thus one of the earliest prophets told his people that when Juda ceased to be a kingdom, then He would come: "The sceptre shall not be taken from Juda, nor a ruler from His thigh, till He come that is to be sent, and He shall be the expectation of nations. (Genesis 49:10) And one of the latest prophets made this time still more definite: "Seventy weeks are shortened upon thy people and upon thy holy city, that transgression may be finished, and sin may have an end, and iniquity may be abolished, and everlasting justice may be brought, and vision and prophecy may be fulfilled, and the Saint of saints may be anointed. (Daniel 9:24)
Another prophet told the place where He should be born. "And thou, Bethlehem, Ephrata, art a little one in the thousands of Juda, out of thee shall He come forth unto me Who shall be the Ruler in Israel, and His going forth is from the beginning, and from the days of eternity. Therefore will He give them up even unto the time when she that travaileth shall bring forth, and the remnant of His brethren shall be converted to the children of Israel. (Micah 5:2,3) We know how deeply this prophecy was stamped into the minds of the Jews, for when the Wise Men came from the East, asking where He was born, at once the scribes and priests gave answer: "In Bethlehem of Juda."
Another prophet announced the change that would come over the sacrifices of the law, as if this were to be the final proof that indeed it was He. With the prophecy quoted above, compare this well-known passage from Malachias: "From the rising of the sun even to the going down, My name is great among the Gentiles; and in every place there is sacrifice, and there is offered in My name a clean oblation, for My name is great among the Gentiles, saith the Lord of hosts (Malachi 1:2). Thus would Christ, when He "was lifted up, draw all things to Himself," uniting in Himself, making fruitful in Himself, all the sacrifices that had been or would be; in this sense "the Lamb slain from the beginning of the world," and to the end, as Saint John expresses it.
- from The Prince of Peace: Meditations, by Archbishop Alban Goodier, SJ. It has the Nihil Obstat of F. Thome Bergh, O.S.B., Censor Deputatus, and the Imprimatur of Canon Edmund Surmont, Vicar General, Diocese of Westminster, England, 16 November 1915