For Isaiah of Babylon, the future of Jerusalem and of the Jewish people itself was connected only with God's presence, which he calls "glory," as many before him had called this presence. He understood that the natural history of his people, flowing along in its own course like the history of all other nations, ended after Jerusalem was defeated by the Babylonian army in 587 BC.

The Babylonian exile should have been the end of Jewish history, just as the Babylonian invasion became the end of the history of many other peoples who lived nearby. And if this did not happen, it was only because of a special plan and purpose of God, who decided to preserve His people so that they might carry out a special task assigned by God Himself.

Isaiah understands that the entire post-exilic history of his people is a continually ongoing miracle. And a miracle is possible only with the direct presence of God and His direct intervention in the events taking place, especially since the task set by God is altogether impossible by human strength. The matter is nothing less than the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of the messianic Kingdom. Here only readiness depends on the human being: readiness to see, to hear, to meet. But even this requires a special action of God: He Himself prepares a person for the meeting with the Messiah whom He has sent. And the whole world comes to Jerusalem not to see monuments from former times, but to see the living God and His Kingdom. Not all of the prophet's contemporaries understood this. For many, the very fact of returning to the land of their fathers was the completion of the journey and a deserved reward. But Isaiah understands that this is not the completion, but only a stage on the Way, the Way that leads to the Kingdom.

Describing the Jerusalem opened to him in a vision, Isaiah speaks of it in such a way that at times it is not easy to understand what city and what reality he means. A sun that does not set, a moon that does not hide, God's light fully illuminating what appears to be an earthly city: what is this? Heaven or earth? The easiest answer would be: heaven. But would such an answer be correct? Does the very division of the world into "heavenly" and "earthly" correspond to God's design?

Let us remember the first day of creation: there is not yet any division into "earthly" and "heavenly" there. It will appear later, on the second day. On the first day there is only one division: between light and darkness. And there is the world, permeated by God's light, the light of His presence. Yes, of course, later this unity, this wholeness of the created order, was broken. And this happened even before the fall of man, already on the second day of creation.

God never regarded such a state of affairs as the norm. The restoration of the wholeness of creation entered God's plan from the very moment of its division. And man was to play his role in solving this task. Of course, the fall changed much. After the fall, what became urgent for man was not so much the restoration of the wholeness of creation as the overcoming of the consequences of the catastrophe that distorted and perverted his own life. But in sending the Messiah into the world, God has both tasks in view.

The Messiah must bring the Kingdom of God into the world, and at the same time open to man the possibility, by sharing in the life of this Kingdom, of restoring the wholeness and fullness of his own life. And the Kingdom includes not only "heaven," but also "earth." It does not presuppose a splitting of the created order. The world must again become whole, as on the first day of creation. Whole, and transfigured. This is how Isaiah sees Jerusalem. It is revealed to him as part of that Kingdom to which the prophet bore witness. The Kingdom where the new heaven meets the new earth.

Today's reading brings us back again to the image of messianic Jerusalem. And once again before us is the two-level character that is generally typical of this image as it appears in the preaching of Isaiah of Babylon. On the one hand, Jerusalem is a quite real earthly city, a city flourishing and triumphant (vv. 4-17). Of course, concrete history is also before us here: after Cyrus's decree, Jerusalem really was restored by the repatriates who returned to Judea and later became a wealthy and prosperous city. But earthly, historical Jerusalem never knew wealth and power like those described in today's passage. Then it becomes clear that the subject is not only Jerusalem as a purely historical reality.

This becomes even clearer when the prophet mentions realities that quite obviously cannot exist in any earthly city. One such mention is Isaiah's statement that in the new Jerusalem a different, spiritual light replaces sunlight, and God Himself becomes its source (vv. 19-20). These words of the prophet echo the words of Isaiah of Jerusalem, who, speaking about messianic times, also mentions radiant glory, the presence of God that turns night into day (Isa. 4:3-5). The messianic kingdom is evidently revealed to the prophet as the earthly world transformed by the action of the Spirit of God, living according to other laws, unthinkable for the present fallen world.

But another point is no less interesting: this new Jerusalem is contrasted with the entire rest of the world, as light is contrasted with darkness (vv. 1-3). This contrast is no longer simply a contrast between the righteous and the wicked or between the people of God and the pagan world. Here the matter concerns events on a universal, cosmic scale. The prophet, it appears, was shown that the world stands opposed to the Kingdom, and that with the coming of the Messiah, which marks the beginning of this Kingdom, the confrontation with the world will not end by itself, but, on the contrary, will only intensify.

Of course, Isaiah says nothing about the long stage by which the Kingdom enters the world; the time for such revelations had not yet come. But he saw one thing clearly: the Kingdom is a reality that enters the world and transforms it, despite the resistance of those forces that do not want this transformation.