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From: Isaiah 6:1-8
The Lord calls Isaiah
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
the whole earth is full of his glory.”
[4] And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. [5] And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”
[6] Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. [7] And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” [8] And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
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Commentary:
6:1-13. As an introduction to what is called the “Book of Immanuel” (7:1-12:6) we get this account of how the Lord called Isaiah to he a prophet, sending him to his people at the time of the Syrian-Ephraimite coalition to explain to them what is going on and how they should act.
The account begins with a theophany (vv. 1-4), which is one of the key points in this book’s message. God manifests himself seated in the manner of eastern kings, surrounded by his angelic court (the “seraphim”), who extol the holiness of the Lord: he clearly is Lord of all. In this vision, God is depicted as the thrice holy (v. 3), the highest form of superlative available in Hebrew. Being holy implies standing apart — standing above everything else. God stands far above all other beings and he is their creator. In Hebrew “holy includes the idea of “sacred”. It means that God has none of the limitations and imperfections that created beings have.
The holiness and majesty of God fill Isaiah with a sense of his own uncleanness and that of his people (v. 5). Typically, visions of God in biblical history induce feelings of fear in the seer; we even see this in the angel’s announcement to Mary (cf. Lk 1:30): “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.”
“Faced with God’s fascinating and mysterious presence, man discovers his own insignificance. Before the burning bush, Moses takes off his sandals and veils his face (cf. Ex 3:5-6) in the presence of God’s holiness. Before the glory of the thrice-holy God, Isaiah cries out: ‘Woe is me! I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips’ (Is 6:5). Before the divine signs wrought by Jesus, Peter exclaims: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’ (Lk 5:8). But because God is holy, he can forgive the man who realizes that he is a sinner before him: ‘I will not execute my fierce anger . . . for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst (Hos 11:9)’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 208).
Isaiah is cleansed and consoled as soon as he humbly acknowledges his unworthiness and insignificance before God (vv. 6-7). His instinctive sense of fear is immediately replaced by a generous and trusting response on the prophet’s part: he is ready to do what God wants (v. 8). “In their ‘one to one’ encounters with God the prophets draw light and strength for their mission. Their prayer is not flight from this unfaithful world, but rather attentiveness to the Word of God. At times their prayer is an argument or a complaint, but it is always an intercession that awaits and prepares for the intervention of the Saviour God, the Lord of history (cf. Amos 7:2, 5; Is 6:5, 8, 11; Jer 1:6; 15:15-18; 20:7-18)” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2584).
Finally, the Lord entrusts him with his mission. The message he is to deliver is hard-hitting and full of paradoxes (vv. 9-10). The task given him is not, as one might at first think, to render the people incapable of hearing and understanding the word of God that could move their hearts. It is, rather, to tell them that if they fail to listen to the word of God, their hearts will he blinded: they will not he able to see things right and, because of that, the sinner will feel no need to take stock of his position and be converted. The Synoptic Gospels interpret Jesus’ preaching as a fulfillment of what is said here in vv. 9-10 (Mt 13:13-15; Mk 4:11-12). The Gospel of St John sees these same words as anticipating what will happen to those who reject Jesus’ message: “Therefore they could not believe. For Isaiah again said, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes and perceive with their heart, and turn for me to heal them.’ Isaiah said this because he saw his glory and spoke of him” (Jn 12:27-
41). And St Paul also uses vv. 9-10 to reproach the Jews of Rome for rejecting the Good News of salvation in Christ which he is proclaiming to them (cf. Acts 28:23-28).
The people’s hardness of heart will merit severe punishment; cities and houses will he laid waste, but all will not be lost: a holy seed will remain and from it the tree will grow back again (v. 11-13). These verses carry a message for people in all ages. Isaiah approaches God in all humility, showing him every reverence, and at the same time he puts his trust in God. For his part, the Lord cleanses his chosen ones and sends them out to help in his work of salvation. Origen, who commented on this passage a number of times, points out: “May burning coals he brought from the altar of heaven to burn my lips. If the burning coals of the Lord touch my lips, they will he purified; and when they are purified and cleansed of all sin, […] my mouth will he opened to the Word of God and I will not utter another impure word [...]. The seraphim who was sent to purify the prophet’s lips did not purify the lips of the people […]; therefore, they continued to live in sin, and now they deny the Lord Jesus Christ and curse him from their unclean mouths. For my part, I pray that the seraphim will come to cleanse my lips (Homiliae in Isaiam, 1, 4). All we need is the same humble docility that Isaiah had: “Having received the grace God, he did not want it to be a gift granted to him to no avail, without being put to work in everything that needed to he done. Seeing the seraphim and the Lord of hosts seated on high,on his throne of glory, he said: ‘Woe me ...’. By speaking thus and making himself ‘unworthy’, he received the help of God because He took in account his humility” (ibid., 6:2). And St John Chrysostom, commenting on Isaiah’s response to God, says that the prophet shows readiness to carry out his mission to the people because “since the saints are friends of God, they, too, love all men dearly” (In Isaiam, 6, 5).