Featured Sunday reading: Isaiah 25-6-10
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines. On this mountain he will destroy
the veil that veils all peoples, the web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from every face; the reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the LORD has spoken. On that day it will be said:
“Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us.
There is a salvation peace that comes among us now, to bring deliverance and hope to our souls. There is a salvation peace, too, extended into eternity, where those who obtain it now quietly, will live that peace into a most delightful day and place to enter into God’s everlasting kingdom and dwell there forever, in feast after feast.
Peace 1A—now. Peace 1B—to come.
Our October weekend Mass begins with a beautiful prophetic vision of a Holy Mountain of the Lord, as told in Isaiah chapter 25. This is Peace 1B—that is to come. The ancient prophet is given a look far beyond, so to share with people Israel, that the ending in sight for God’s faithful is a very blessed one. He paints a faith picture of people dining sumptuously with the Lord.
It is said that the saint living in war times in Italy, Padre Pio, had a strong gift of vision to see what would unfold ahead. A person came to him who was so anxious that they never see their loved one return from war, and had come to pray with the padre. After some intense moments of his eyes closed, he opened them to the woman and smiled. I see your loved one home having dinner with you ahead, after this war. This story of consolation has been passed on through time about this regular prophetic gift of Padre Pio which he used many times in his ministry. I heard about it last week at a pilgrimage to the Padre Pio Center with some folks from here. Pio could see prophetically. He used the gift with limitations on what could advance one’s faith ahead. Pio could also read souls and see what direction they were going—to God or not. Amazing.
I have a related experience about a woman at Riderwood whom I anointed in the hospital. It’s about what she experienced or saw. he returned from the hospital to her home, where she died peacefully. Her family said that after her final anointing she had come to a great final acceptance of her death. Her final words to one of her daughters was this: “All that is in front of me is good. All that is in front of me is good.” It seemed that she had some kind of vision going on. Then to her daughters she also said the word “consolation” six times, describing her condition of hope. She could see some things ahead to draw her Home.
It’s what is called a peaceful death.
That’s really what Isaiah‘s messages to us and for our living the Catholic faith—that in whatever I am going through now or have gone through, what’s ahead for the faithful ones of God is security, peaceful provision, and love and happiness with God. For eternal life is with God– it’s all good ahead.”
In Isaiah’s time there was much to worry about as a believer, with Israel’s faith in decline. (One might say we are in a similar predicament these days.) Yet God said through Isaiah his prophet: The Day of the Lord comes. If one reads Isaiah chapters 13 to 24, then you heard how God plans to deal with all of Israel’s oppressors—in the end of things. The Lord will punish the kings and rulers of the earth and those trying to run a world on their own, instead of letting it be under God and taking the humble Way of the Lord. Isaiah 24 verses 21-22 says God will they gather together them all as prisoners in a pit (we suppose this is hell) and signs of a change happen in the sky, as “the moon will be confounded and the sun darkened in shame for the Lord of host reigns in Mount Zion and Jerusalem and His glory will be forever so.
Then you get to Isaiah 25. Nothing could take away the reign of God and His Holy Mountain, and for those who wanted life under God, they get it.
Isaiah 25:6
On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples
a feast of rich food and choice wines So we are talking of where God dwells in the everlasting, beyond us, up on a holy mount– we are taken up there, the redeemed of The Lord. Isaiah 256b adds on a second time, for a feast of juicy rich food and pure, choice wines there.
The description is of a thanksgiving setting, at a table for all, that somehow God can mightily set, and juicy food and pure wines of celebration all set for His redeemed…
What is the jubilation about?
Isaiah 25:7 On this mountain he will lift and destroy the veil that veils all peoples—- death goes away forever, that was like a pall over the nations. I’ve been to some victory celebrations and dinners, but nothing anywhere and anyhow could be like this one. Isaiah shares what he sees going on above us, in God’s realm.
The Isaiah 25 gets lined up this Sunday with the Gospel of those Pharisees plotting to trip up and end Jesus’ ministry. It says that Jesus saw through their false fronts, malice and utter jealousy against His truth. Jesus knew they were slaves to sin, and they were not living in accord of the Covenant Faith passed down. They were sorely compromised.
Yet Jesus knew the condition of fallen humankind. In His Word, He has explained it to us. We as the human race fell into disgrace and sin as Genesis 3 teaches us, with our Catechism. We became subject to sin and inward turning for #1 rather than being God-led and directed. That meant that each of us gets corrupted in time and we fall into death. That’s been the awful ‘consequence’ of our choices of pride and sin and of our lost Eden. Romans 1 to 7 spells it out in the NT.
I heard Dan Burns sing a song on the Tony Kornheiser show about how Father Time has this thing on all of us, and then Death comes in and takes us away. If we just conform to the fallen world, then that’s how it is. Why? It just is. The song went something like this—
To the world and its conceited, you can joke around, you can tweet it, that your throne of Self is seated, but Father Time—He’s undefeated. Your plans of self-success short-sheeted! For Father time is undefeated. All your pretty whims will go depleted, the Grim Reaper’s swing repeated, to cut the brazen pride all down and ceded, for Father Time, He’s undefeated.
Some have gotten pretty cozy with sin being our only condition to live in, but God has come in Christ to say that a condition of grace is available. Like Isaiah’s vision of The Christ in chapter 25, God will bring home a people who cried on earth: “O God, we looked to You to save us.” Isaiah 25:9. We lived for the revelation of Your open door back to You. We chose to live and walk in faith to your arms.”
Isaiah 25 pairs well with today’s responsorial Psalm 23. Psalm 23:6 says: “I shall live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, “ and how so? It’s because I asked for You, God, to shepherd me, to refresh my dry soul and fickle heart, to get me through the dark valley, to find the right paths and stay on them, and to learn how not to fear evil but the face things with faith, and to see You at my side, that I might have courage.” Psalm 23 has so much in it for meditation.
Isaiah 25 and its picture of a future peace and a dinner at the Lord’s Mount has been attempted to be drawn by artists of history. I remember being quite surprised years ago while being newly assigned to a Montgomery county parish, to find a fine painting reproduction of Isaiah 25 hanging in a church bathroom. I had a very good laugh at that, because the church itself was very plain and did not have any real artwork in it except for a couple of statues, but otherwise had mostly the bare white walls, like ours, but oh my, what an inspiring bathroom! As one took their rest, they could ponder their eternal rest and wedding supper of the Lamb.
But such artful inspiration ought to be seen in church sanctuaries, joined to the good liturgy going on.
Perhaps we do need some more church art inside the sanctuary and worship area in many churches. I thought of that last Saturday night.
I was with a pilgrimage group to Bally, Pennsylvania where we had vigil Mass at Blessed Sacrament church. This Jesuit-founded parish of old had the typical placement of lots of artwork in the sanctuary and all around and the windows on the ceilings. It’s characteristic of the Jesuits to paint that warmth around you for a heartwarming feel of being home on earth with God at Mass.
Since Isaiah‘s message from God was trying to give them a picture ahead of better things than of things going on in their day, it’s not a bad notion to paint things on the walls of that vision. Here is what Blessed Sacrament church looked like in the sanctuary.
Imagine what a Resurrection Image would look like over our sanctuary in the curved walls behind the crucifix.
There is bad plotting—the Pharisees actions to stop Jesus in Matthew 22. There is good plotting—us looking for added ways to praise Jesus on earth until we are praising Him in heaven. At the homily start I said: There is a salvation peace that comes among us now, to bring deliverance and hope to our souls. There is a salvation peace, too, extended into eternity, into a most delightful day and place to enter into God’s everlasting kingdom and dwell there forever, in feast after feast. Can you just see it already?