NOTES for Isa 2:3-11

“The proud look of man will be abased, and the loftiness of man will be humbled, and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day...” The Lord alone will be exalted in that day... but the Lord is always exalted, the Lord is always far above all that is ours. What exactly does the prophet wish to tell us about “that day”, and what day is it? Has it already come, or is it still to come? We cannot give an unambiguous answer; it would be more accurate to say both yes and no. Yet once again the road to Easter lies before us, the road to the day of the Lord's greatest glory. Before the radiance of that glory all our deeds become insignificant. There is something special here. In the Liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom, among the final words spoken by the priest before Communion are the words: “The holy things for the holy.” The Holy Gifts are given to us as to holy people, because it cannot be otherwise. For a moment, while we receive Communion, we become holy; the Lord brings us into His glory and exalts us, for an instant. But now this road to Easter lies before us, and except on Sundays there is no longer the Liturgy of Chrysostom... Why? Let us recall what the choir answers to the priest's words “The holy things for the holy.” It answers: “One is holy, one is Lord, Jesus Christ, to the glory of God the Father.” Truly, only the Lord is holy: “the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.” The Lord calls us to His glory, calls us to the likeness to Him that was given beforehand; but the day comes when we understand that we imagined ourselves exalted, whereas we are insignificant, because we cannot conquer death. We are capable of a great deal; a human being can attain real holiness and can heal as the Lord did, yet even the holiest person dies. No one, no one has risen from the grave. However great the veneration of incorrupt remains, there is no life in them. No... We noticed that in the Vulgate the words “the loftiness of man will be humbled” read “incurvabitur altitudo virorum.” The word “incurvabitur” literally means “will be bent”; one might say “will bow down”, and that is how the Synodal translation renders the word in Isaiah chapter 5: “And man will bow down” — “et incurvabitur homo” (Isa 5:15). But “bow down” is a translation “according to the sense”, whereas Russian has a very apt word close to “incurvabitur”: “извратится”, “will be distorted.” That is the rendering given by Dvoretsky's dictionary, and it is also clear from the structure of the words. This is precisely how our loftiness will be distorted. For there is a straight way upwards, while we follow a crooked way. In English, for instance, curve, which shares the root of incurvabitur, means a curved line; every mathematician or physicist knows that any curvilinear motion, any movement along a curve, can be resolved into the sum of rectilinear motion and rotation. That is why “distortion” sounds somehow especially clear in today's Vulgate. We must feel and understand this: the road to Easter lies before us, and there are only forty days for this road. Our choice is to go straight and arrive, or to follow a curve, to become distorted, and fail to arrive in time.

The way of the Lord, of which the prophet Isaiah speaks, differs strikingly from human ways. The Lord Himself proclaims this through Isaiah, saying: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the Lord" (Isa. 55:8). This qualitative difference is expressed above all in the fact that human ways do not lead into life; only the Lord, who is Life itself, can lead us to Himself.

And now we read at the beginning of the book of Isaiah that God does not abandon people, but that a day will come when He will teach all nations His ways. That means it is attainable, no matter how hard we try to prove the opposite. And it means that God's will is for us to find the way of life. It is also important that this prophecy was fulfilled in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

How easily love and hatred, friendliness and hostility, kindness and malice, peacefulness and belligerence coexist in a person. We even consider this "natural": it is normal to treat "our own" well and "outsiders" badly. So for Israel, too, other peoples are outsiders, and war with them is natural.

But the prophet Isaiah says that a time will come when God, who chose the people of Israel, will also be acknowledged by other nations. Then there will be no "outsiders," because all will become "our own" to God and therefore to one another. Then there will be only one "natural" state both for the human person and for humanity: peace. Peace not simply as the absence of war, but as the whole, harmonious ordering of the human personality awakening to positive relationships with others, and the same creatively active and fruitful existence of all humanity as a whole.

Only first one must break away from the proud stereotype of "fighting for peace," of arranging the world according to one's own ideas, and humbly accept another way of life and action: "acquiring the Spirit of peace."

Today in Isaiah's prophecy we hear a severe warning, at the same time filled with astonishing hope. The prophet says that the day of the Lord is coming against everything proud and exalted. These words almost literally coincide with the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, who says that the one who exalts himself will be humbled. The prophet says of human greatness that it will fall.

Usually we emphasize the word "greatness," and we are distressed by such a prophecy. But for the prophet himself what matters, on the contrary, is that this is human greatness, not God's. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day, he says. From this fact the prophet sees the result that the idols will disappear completely. And in this lies the hope of our world.

We ourselves are unable to free ourselves from slavery to idols, if not material ones, then spiritual ones. We do not always even understand exactly how we are guilty of idolatry. But the Day of the Lord, the day of Christ's coming, when all idols will fall, will become the day of our liberation. And in this lies our hope of salvation.

Today we read that the Lord gave the human being the right to give names to every living creature. And about the first prohibition, concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. About how the Lord warned that if one ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, one would die. And how He watched as the human being gave names to the animals and birds.

When the human being was in his Father's house, and He showed him the world, spoke with him, and rejoiced in his achievements. And although today we do not read about the breaking of the first law, not to eat the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, we know that this was how the fall took place. And having become proud, the human being began his rule on earth by the sweat of his brow.

And in the words of the prophet Isaiah we know that on the day of the Second Coming God will restore in us the memory of who created everything we manage. He will restore it through our fear. He will take away our strength and abilities, and once again we will become speechless. And our works will condemn us.

In the Proverbs of Solomon we read a remembrance and an indication that fulfilling the Lord's commandments is the fulfillment of the Father's will by His children. When the Lord entrusts something to us, we, as His children, carry out these requests and assignments. We need wisdom and understanding, humility, and the will to be with Him. Now we have to accomplish much labor in order to meet Him again. Almost impossible labor, were it not for His desire to meet us. Not only by His will, but by our love for Him.

All people's hopes in themselves and in other people are in vain... Only when the word of the Lord reaches people, when the Lord Himself reigns, when all nations believe and call upon His name—only then will there be true light and genuine peace on earth.

In today’s reading from the book of the prophet Isaiah, the Lord tells us three important things that express all our hope. First, He promises to cleanse His people. This is our only hope, because in the final analysis a person is unable to purify his own heart. Of course, purification is also impossible without the person’s own desire and effort. Repentance and fasting can become the point of support through which God fills our desire for purification with strength.

Second, the Lord once again speaks of what He expects from people. “Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and her converts with righteousness.” In this way, God shows us the path of purification and reveals His will for us in a few words.

Third, today’s reading contains Isaiah’s first messianic prophecy, which corresponds almost word for word to the words of his contemporary, the prophet Micah: “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established on the top of the mountains.” Repentance and purification, righteousness and hope—everything for us is centered on Christ.

The texts for the first Sunday of Advent call us first of all to watchfulness. Not only because we cannot determine the moment when a child will be born. But also because our expectation of seeing Jesus now must be like what parents feel when they have already been waiting eight months for the birth of a child. There is no patience left at all: when at last will we be able to see, to know who this is, what He is like? Life is about to change at any minute, and there are too many of those minutes.

The changes in our life that Jesus gives us are immeasurably greater. He will come to us as a newborn infant, who cannot speak and who will not get anywhere unless we carry Him. In the time left to us before His birth, we must accustom ourselves to the thought that, like any little child, Jesus means cares, constant anxieties, and watchfulness at any time of day or night.

Is He well with us? Is He warm? Will we teach Him to smile? And will we unlearn how to wage war when He appears in our life?

"The strong shall become tow, and his work a spark; and they shall both burn together, and no one shall quench them." Following the path after the Lord means following the path of humility and humiliation, of making oneself small before the whole world. In each of us there is a secret and heavy striving for perfection and victory. At times it is not even clear over what. And we multiply envy and quarrels, trying to find our own path before people.

We want to occupy a higher position, receive more pleasure, and so on. This is like constant hunger. And in trying to satisfy ourselves, to indulge our desires, we condemn ourselves to death. Death from endless exhaustion, from emptiness, and in the loneliness of the heart. And the more stubbornly we persist on our path toward victories and achievements for our own sake, the more God resists us, because He knows that our works are vain and useless if through our labor we are not seeking His presence in the world. If we are not seeking peace and are not softening our heart for His sake. "For out of Zion shall go forth the law." The law of eternal life and peace.