NOTES for Isa 49:8-15

In what condition does a person usually say that God has forgotten him? Of course, it is usually the condition of grave sin. It seems that if I have forgotten the Lord, then He has no reason to remember me. In today's Old Testament reading the Lord says that it is impossible for Him to forget His people. He remembers us simply because He loves, without conditions and without explanations.

Each of us chooses life or death, freedom in God or the false freedom of sin. But we know that in reality every sin makes a person a slave. Those who in today's reading are called prisoners and those sitting in darkness made their own choice. But today the Lord does not remind them of this. He simply says: "Come out! Show yourselves! The day of salvation has come!" He hears the voice of those who cry to Him for salvation, and He has mercy and saves, because He is the God who has mercy. This passage is the song of the Lord Himself, who rejoices as He delivers and comforts His people.

In the context of the prophecy about the salvation God will accomplish in Christ, Deutero-Isaiah, the unknown author of the second half of the book of the prophet Isaiah, records these stunning words. They are addressed to everyone and to each person, regardless of anything. How often we fall into despair and complaint, take offense at God, because it appears to us that He has abandoned us to fate. And the issue is not only that we fail to notice His blessings, fail to notice all His priceless gifts: light and air, food and work, the powers of life and life itself. They are, of course, given to us, and we are, of course, not grateful enough to God for them.

But we need something far greater: His compassion, His protection, and His deliverance from the grim prospect of death. That is precisely why it is so important for us that the Lord will never forget us, and that His memory and His compassion surpass even a mother's love; in other words, they surpass everything we know in this world as love and memory. It is simply astonishing how secure life becomes if we rely on the truth of this promise of God. Even in the most terrible things, in suffering and death, hope appears if we believe these words. This hope is especially strong on the day of Resurrection.

The prophecy of Second Isaiah that we read today takes the form of God's words addressed to the Messiah. At first glance, it contains the things most characteristic of messianic prophecies: the blessing and salvation that God will accomplish through His Servant. Yet two points attract our attention. First, the Lord addresses the one ‘despised by all, a servant of rulers’, saying: ‘Kings will see and rise; princes will bow down for the sake of the Lord, who is faithful, for the sake of the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen You.’ In the eyes of the Pharisees and scribes, the shameful execution Christ suffered on the Cross showed that He could not be the Messiah. They tended to understand the words about glory literally, and the prophets' words about the Messiah's humiliation, as in today's reading, figuratively. Yet Second Isaiah indicates that the Messiah's glory comes to Him precisely in humiliation.

Second, the words ‘…I will make You a covenant of the people’ are exceptionally important. This is neither clumsy expression nor a poor translation, but a precise way of expressing the meaning. The Lord does not say, ‘Through You I will make a covenant with people’, so we cannot think of the Messiah merely as a mediator between God and humanity, as Moses was. The Lord does not even say, ‘You will make a covenant’, which would be quite accurate. The words ‘…I will make You a covenant of the peoples…’ express a great mystery: the New Covenant is established in Christ Himself. It is important to set beside this prophecy Christ's words, ‘I am the true vine… Abide in Me, and I in you’, and the apostle Paul's words, ‘All of you who were baptised into Christ have put on Christ.’ To participate in the New Covenant means to be wholly together with Jesus.

Before us is one of the central passages of Isaiah's prophecy. The interpretations of the Church Fathers reveal its meaning as a prophecy about the coming Savior, called here the Holy One of Israel. But the character of the narrative may suggest that it speaks only of Israel's earthly triumph, and this reading must have made it considerably harder for some of the people to recognize the Messiah when He came among them.

Yet when the Messiah came to earth, He not only revealed the Heavenly Father in Himself, but also embodied in His human form the traits of those sons of the people of Israel who were closest to God, concentrating within Himself the essence of their spiritual paths.

But the paths shown to Israel are not paths for one people alone: by following them, Israel marked out guideposts for everyone else. Now all humanity can become God's numerous and diverse people by accepting the One Who would appear in Israel several centuries later.