The Sacred Page: Staying Awake: Readings for 1st Sunday of Advent

Happy New Year, everyone! The Church Year begins this Sunday with the First Sunday of Advent, and we are back to reading cycle A in Church Year 2020.

There is a very ancient tradition in the Church of reading the Book of Isaiah during Advent. In antiquity, both Jews and Christians considered the Book of Isaiah to be one extended prophesy of the “age to come,” the “latter days” when the Anointed One (Heb. “Meshiach,” =”Messiah”) would arrive. The First Readings for Sunday Mass and for weekday masses, as well as the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours, are dominated by Isaiah during this liturgical season.

The Gospel sequence, the First Sunday of Advent focuses on Jesus’ Second Coming, forming a good transition from the month of November with its focus on the Last Things. The Second and Third Sundays of Advent focus on John the Baptist, the fore-runner of Jesus. The Fourth Sunday finally casts its gaze on the events leading directly to Jesus birth.

That’s the journey we are about to begin, so without further ado, let’s plunge in!

1. The First Reading is Isaiah 2:1-5:

This is what Isaiah, son of Amoz,

saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.

In days to come,

the mountain of the LORD’s house

shall be established as the highest mountain

and raised above the hills.

All nations shall stream toward it;

many peoples shall come and say:

“Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain,

to the house of the God of Jacob,

that he may instruct us in his ways,

and we may walk in his paths.”

For from Zion shall go forth instruction,

and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.

He shall judge between the nations,

and impose terms on many peoples.

They shall beat their swords into plowshares

and their spears into pruning hooks;

one nation shall not raise the sword against another,

nor shall they train for war again.

O house of Jacob, come,

let us walk in the light of the Lord!

At the risk of repeating myself from earlier posts, let me give some background on the Book of Isaiah:

“Isaiah is the great prophetic book of the Bible, and is rivaled only by the Psalms in its influence over subsequent Jewish and Christian theology and liturgy. Although not a systematic theologian, to a certain extant Isaiah is to the Old Testament what St. Paul is to the New: the great, comprehensive theological mind who provides a framework into which the insights and contributions of other inspired authors can be fit.

In Judaism in antiquity, the Samaritans and Sadducees accepted as inspired only the Books of Moses, but Isaiah held unquestioned authority among all other religious Jews, whether in Palestine or the Diaspora, and within the early Church.

The Book was usually called simply by the name of its prophetic author—in Hebrew yeshîyahu, “The LORD saves,” in Latin Isaias, in Greek Ēsaias—or a longer variant thereof, for example, in Hebrew sepher yeshîyahu, “Book of Isaiah,” or in Latin liber prophetae Isaias, “Book of the Prophet Isaiah,” cf. Luke 4:17, 3:4.

Within the Jewish tradition, Isaiah eventually settled as the first book of the Latter Prophets (nevi’im ’aharim), preceding the other two major prophets (Jeremiah, Ezekiel) and the Book of the Twelve (Hosea–Malachi). The canonical order of the Septuagint was unsettled: in some ancient manuscripts, the Wisdom books are followed by the Twelve, which precede Isaiah and the other major prophets. This order eventually became standard in the Greek tradition. In other ancient LXX manuscripts, Isaiah followed the Wisdom literature as the first of the major prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, following chronology and length) followed by the twelve minor prophets. St. Jerome and the Latin tradition followed this alternate order of the Septuagint, which became the canonical order now familiar to Christians in the West.

The only complete, intact copy of a biblical book to be recovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls was a manuscript of Isaiah, the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaiah^a). In addition, fragmentary remains, often substantial, of another twenty-one manuscripts of Isaiah were discovered at Qumran, a number exceeded only by the Psalms (36) and Deuteronomy (30). Furthermore, Isaiah is the most-quoted biblical book in the non-biblical Dead Sea Scrolls, and no less than six commentaries (pesharim) on the book were also found. The influence of Isaiah at Qumran is paralleled in the New Testament. Isaiah is second only to the Psalms as the most-quoted biblical book by the New Testament authors; furthermore, the quotations are often not merely important but fundamental or definitional for the Gospel message (e.g. Isa 40:3 in Mark 1:2-3; Isa 42:1-4 in Matt 12:18-21; Isa 6:9-10 in Matt 13:14-15). Thus, in the early Church, the Book of Isaiah was often considered “the fifth Gospel,” and indeed St. Jerome calls Isaiah “not only a prophet … but an Evangelist” who “pursued … all the mysteries of Christ and the Church to clarity.”

Isaiah dominates the liturgical traditions of both Judaism and Christianity. In the synagogue, it is the prophet of choice read for the haftarah portion—the selection from the prophets read to accompany the Sabbath unit from the Law (the sederah). In the Catholic liturgical tradition, the frequency with which Isaiah is proclaimed in the Liturgy of the Word second only to the Psalms among Old Testament books. In fact, the Isaiah is read in the lectionary more frequently than the Gospel of Mark. Following an ancient tradition, the Liturgy of the Hours reads the majority of the Book semi-continuously throughout Advent, where it is understood as a prophecy of both the first and second coming of the Christ.”

Now to look at the specific passage for this Sunday:

Isaiah 2 occurs near the beginning of the Book of Isaiah, and in many ways summarizes the prophet’s hopes for the restoration of Jerusalem in the coming age. For much of the period when Isaiah was writing in the 700’s BC, northern Israel was near to being annihilated, or already had been (c. 722 BC), and southern Judah had been reduced by the Assyrians to a rump state consisting of the area around the capital, Jerusalem. In Judah itself, sincere worshipers of the LORD (YHWH) were few in number, and the culture was dominated by hypocritical or “cultural” Yahwism and/or syncretism with paganism. It was a very discouraging period for those wholly devoted to the the LORD, God of Israel, who found themselves outnumbered, powerless, and culturally impotent in the face of forces that seemed ready to extinguish any witness to the true God from the face of the earth.

Nonetheless, in this time period, Isaiah sees a vision of hope: against all odds, the day will come when the nations of the earth will seek out the LORD and come to Mt. Zion to learn his law, and the Word of the LORD will judge nations and bring them peace.

Has the prophet’s word been fulfilled, or do we still await a fulfillment?

It is essential to recognize that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper and instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice and covenant at Mt. Zion in the year of his death. Every time we celebrate Mass, we are taken sacramentally into the Upper Room on Mt. Zion, in order to renew there our covenant with the LORD, who has shown his face to us in the man Jesus of Nazareth, the “Word of the LORD” of whom Isaiah speaks in our Reading.

Thus, the Mass makes Mt. Zion present. As people from all nations stream to Mass this weekend, there is a fulfillment of Isaiah’s words, that “many peoples shall come and say:

Come, let us climb the LORD’s mountain!” The Church is the New Zion, as the Book of Hebrews makes clear (Heb 12:22-24).

The way God has fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy through the Church is a superior fulfillment than if a literal, physical shrine had been established in Jerusalem where everyone had to go to learn, say, the Ten Commandments. A physical fulfillment of the prophet’s words would have limited our interaction with God to those times when we were able to afford plane fare to Israel, but by making Zion sacramentally present to every place on the planet—“from the rising of the sun even to its setting, they bring a pure offering to my name” (Mal 1:11)—God has facilitated the education of the nations in the Law of God.

And for those who may feel discouraged because it seems like many nations that once streamed to the LORD have now turned aside to follow a secular mindset—let us take heart! In Isaiah’s day, the fortunes of those who worshiped the God of Israel were so much lower than the Church of our own day. The secular worldview of modernity is so literally sterile that its adherents cannot muster the joy and courage to raise enough children to replace themselves. The culture of death is quickly killing itself. In the meantime, let us take every opportunity to lay new foundations for Zion, for the time will come when the winds of the times will change, and we must be ready to accommodate the streams of pilgrims to the New Zion who will come in future generations.

P. The Responsorial Psalm is Ps 122: 1-2, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9: