NOTES for Isa 25:1-9

Isaiah's prophecy speaks of Christ's Resurrection: "And He will remove the reproach from His people." Reproach is not only insults, suffering, and oppression. It is also the burden of sin, which, like disease, like leprosy, separates a person from God and from other people. It is also original sin, by which we are marked and from which we cannot be freed except through death and Resurrection on the day of Judgment. And His people are everyone who lays down his soul for Him and for the Gospel.

Death has already been swallowed up forever. And the joy of the Resurrection is with us every day. And on the last day there will be a rainbow, and the Lord will restore paradise on earth, and His people will go up the mountain and celebrate their meeting with the Lord and the restoration of the world. The world as it was conceived and created in the first days.

The middle of Great Lent is approaching, and today we therefore read the prophet Isaiah's words about God's victory. The prophet sings a hymn to the Almighty and speaks of a victory spreading ever more widely. At the beginning of the passage he praises God for the destruction of a kingdom opposed to Him; then the prophet's gaze turns to the salvation of the poor and oppressed. He says that, thanks to the Almighty's intervention, the breath of tyrants was like a storm against a wall, and He subdued the raging of the enemies. But then the prophet says that, just like earthly oppressors, oppressors of an entirely different kind will also be defeated and subdued. The Lord will destroy the covering that lies over all peoples, that is, the barrier between all people and Himself. Finally, the prophet praises the victory over death and suffering themselves: death will be swallowed up forever, and the Lord God will wipe away the tears from every face. Faith that this is how it will be can be a source of strength for us at all times.

Yes or no? The word announced by Isaiah almost 27 centuries ago will come true or not? One can say that it is the key question defining our relation towards life. One can live only by leaning on this prediction, only by hoping that it is truth. Otherwise everything loses its meaning, and life becomes horrible and absurd. Indeed, suffering swamps the world as a deluge, and deliverance from it is not seen. All our joy and high aspirations, all our good deeds, quite as all our sins, wickedness and greediness are vanities and chasing of wind, because death waits for everyone. But, when God says these words through the prophet – everything changes. The sovereignty of death is not definitive, it will be overcome, and all the suffering of people will find consolation – implying to have the meaning to live.

God gives a multitude of confirmations of His loyalty throughout the history, so that we can believe preeminently in this promise. In the life of everyone who seeks for God, accumulates the experience showing that God is faithful - in particular so that you can believe. For our relation towards our self, towards life and towards the world it is the fundament, which psychology calls "basic trust". Without it, no person can grow intellectually and in emotionally healthy.

And all the same the prophet summons us to the exploit of trust. Believing to his words is also difficult, as it was difficult for Peter to believe the Lord Jesus, come down out of the boat and walk on the water. Indeed, we can receive a definitive assertion of the truthfulness of the words of the prophet only when his word will come true. But how difficult it is not to believe in these words! All our essence opposes to this sinister nonsense, in which is transformed our life of distrust. Somewhere in the inconceivable intimacy of the human nature is put the secret knowledge of the fact that this prediction is true. And that is why hope is so vivifying for us.

"That day"... For the prophet Isaiah this day is in the future. Where is this day for us? In the past, when the Son of God agreed to die on the cross for our salvation? Or in the future, when He will come in power and glory and will achieve the definitive victory on evil? And if this day was today, and in this day such a meeting is laid ahead for us, when we shall say: "lo, this is our God!"? Do we want this meeting? Is there in us this hope, without which the meeting is impossible? Are we ready to accept the joy that brings this meeting?

The Apocalypse of Isaiah is not a story about coming disasters, but a vision of the triumph of God's Kingdom. Let us note for ourselves several details of which the prophet speaks: victory over the enemies of Israel, the gathering of Israel from dispersion, the Lord's feast for all nations on Mount Zion, the openness of the paths of personal righteousness, victory over death and the resurrection of the dead, the defeat of the serpent, and joy and gladness in God's salvation. Why was this written? We are called to take part in this victory - through our trust in the prophecy and our agreement with God's plan.

Describing the messianic era, the prophet especially mentions the full and final victory over death. In general, the Bible says much about victory over death and about the universal resurrection at the end of time. As for what happens after death, the biblical books say almost nothing about it. Unlike Egyptian or Greek texts, the Bible says nothing about the immortality of the soul and recompense beyond the grave. This is not surprising: an immortal soul existing separately from the body is not yet life in all its fullness.

Life in all its fullness can only be the life of the whole human being, soul and body together, not apart. But that is not the only point. The point is also how the Bible sees the human being. We, people of the modern age, look at the human being more through the eyes of a Greek philosopher than through the eyes of the authors of the biblical books. For us, a human being is an eternal and unchanging soul joined to a temporary and fragile body. But in the Bible the soul is by no means unchanging.

In the biblical books, the soul is not a structure at all, but a process. It is the flow of human life in all its manifestations, from the highest spiritual aspirations to simple physiology, such as breathing and blood circulation. And into this essentially natural flow enters that "breath of life" which God "breathes" into the human being's "nostrils" at creation.

At the point where these two flows intersect, God's "breath of life" and natural existence, as a modern philosopher would call the biblical "soul," the human person is born. The fullness of human life is determined by the intensity of this natural process. And the intensity of the process depends on what determines its quality: nature or God's "breath of life." Here there are many possibilities, from the fullness of life in the Kingdom to its minimum in Sheol, in the world of shadows, where one can speak of life only in a very qualified sense.

In the Bible, death is not the disappearance of the human being, not his departure into nonbeing, but the draining away of life within him to the minimum that turns the dead person into an empty shell, a lifeless shadow. The opposite of death is not simply life, but life in fullness, in that fullness which is possible only in the Kingdom. In the Kingdom there is no place for death in any of its forms and there can be none. Therefore the coming of the Messiah and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom put an end to death: as long as death has not disappeared completely, life has not yet won. That means the Kingdom in all its fullness has not yet come either.

How little what Isaiah writes resembles what happens in Matthew... The healing of the sick and the multiplication of loaves in the wilderness seem so unlike the prophet's vision. Whichever verse we take, everything is different! And yet what happens in the wilderness, when the blind see, lepers are cleansed, and the Savior feeds all who are in need, is precisely the fulfillment of the prophecies in life. When words labor to express the inexpressible, a person tries somehow to fit them into his own understanding. Later, he finds it difficult to admit that they come to life differently from what he imagined. But this does not prevent God from fulfilling His promises and wiping away the tears from every face.