Dear Sisters, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, what we have heard about in all the readings today is life-changing experiences. Isaiah, Paul, Simon Peter, James and John – all of these men were totally transformed by experiences which we have just heard told to us. We begin with Isaiah. Isaiah was an Israelite nobleman in Jerusalem about 700 years before the time of our Lord. His book is one of the greatest of the Old Testament, which is why his name is familiar even nowadays. The book of Isaiah is one of the longest books in the whole Bible, containing some sixty six chapters. We hear it read in instalments at Mass during Advent and Passiontide especially. Today’s reading comes from the sixth chapter and describes the wonderful vision of God and His angels in the Temple of Jerusalem in which Isaiah was given his mission as a prophet by God Himself.
Isaiah was in the Temple, the holy place of God’s dwelling among His chosen people, the place in which sacrifices were offered daily to God. Here he was suddenly taken into an ecstasy. He saw the Lord God enthroned on high above him. Then he saw mighty spirits surrounding God’s throne. He names them as ‘Seraphim’, which is the Hebrew word for ‘burning spirits’. These are the greatest of all the angelic spirits, greater even than angels, whose name means ‘messengers’. The seraphim are more than messengers. They are the mighty spirits whom God made at the beginning of creation to stand around His throne perpetually worshipping their creator. Their bright beauty and burning majesty reflects the even greater beauty and majesty of their maker. This is a most extraordinary vision given to Isaiah, because the Seraphim are far greater than any of the angels whom we meet in the Scriptures and it is the only time in all Scripture that they are seen or even mentioned. Isaiah describes their strangely wonderful appearance. They each have six wings, again reflecting their greater status than the angelic messengers normally pictured with two wings. Of course, what Isaiah saw was a vision. The Seraphim are spirits and so they are invisible by nature. Therefore this vision was designed by God Himself to represent His power and majesty in a way that Isaiah could experience as something vastly greater than any human language or concept could explain.
Then Isaiah was granted another level of experience. He not only saw the Seraphim, but he was allowed to hear them singing to God. This, we should remember, is the very meaning of their existence, the fulfilment of their purpose in God’s plan: eternally to sing His praises. Isaiah is given an insight into their great hymn of praise: they sing in turn, one first, then another, these words: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.’ Isaiah hears them singing this great refrain, back and forth, endlessly praising God. The sound is so tremendous and deep that the entire foundations shake as though in a great earthquake. This is what Isaiah heard. Then he saw something else: the Temple was filled with smoke. This was so dense that he could not see through it. God was hidden from his sight. What was this smoke? There are several places in Scripture where a dense cloud is described as hiding God’s infinite majesty from human sight. It is called the ‘shekinah’, a word meaning ‘glory’. We hear of it, for instance in the cloud which leads the people of Israel through the wilderness after the Exodus and appears to Moses on Mount Sinai. We hear of it in the account of the Transfiguration, where Christ in glory is hidden by a cloud out of which God speaks to Peter, James and John, ‘This is my beloved Son; hear Him!’. And we are told that the disciples fell on their faces out of fear and awe. So too, Isaiah suddenly comes to himself in the midst of this awe-inspiring cloud of glory and the mighty chant of God’s seraphim, and says: ‘woe is me! For I am lost!’.
It is the same cloud of smoke that fills the Temple when Solomon solemnly consecrates it to the worship of God. We see it symbolized in the fragrant cloud of incense rising around the altar at Mass on high feast days, or before the Blessed Sacrament at Adoration and Benediction. It is a sign of God’s presence and of His majesty, and it should inspire awe in us and a holy fear.
But what is holy fear? It is not a phobia, i.e. an irrational fear such as fear of the dark or of spiders, but rather a fear which inspires both a strong sense of unworthiness coupled with a deep desire to worship and adore the object toward which holy fear is directed. In Isaiah’s case holy fear is expressed in his dramatic exclamation: ‘woe is me! For I am lost!’ This holy fear is also found in today’s Gospel, when Simon Peter was suddenly aware that this man who has led him to a miraculous catch of fish is indeed truly awe-inspiring and something else too: holy. It is holiness that inspires this fear; the holiness of God. It is this sense in Isaiah and Simon Peter that makes Isaiah say ‘I am a man of unclean lips’ and Peter say ‘depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!’.
But for both men this is not the end. God does not leave Isaiah lost in uncleanness, nor Peter in a sense of his total sinfulness in this awe-inspiring presence. Instead, God uses the experience of both men to commission them. Isaiah sees a seraph fly towards him, who takes a burning coal from the altar, a coal on which incense is burned, and the seraph touches Isaiah’s lips to burn away his sinfulness. This vision is the basis of the prayer that the priest or deacon says silently before he reads the Gospel at Mass: ‘Clean my heart and my lips O Almighty God, who cleansed the lips of Isaiah with a burning coal, so that I may worthily proclaim your holy Gospel.’ After this, Isaiah, now cleansed from his unworthiness, hears God asking, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ to which Isaiah now replies, filled with new confidence and zeal for God: ‘Here I am; send me!’ and so it is that Isaiah received his commission as a prophet, and we can read his wonderful book to this day which enlightens us about the Messiah and the terrible sufferings He freely endured for our sake.
Then there is Peter. He tries to distance himself from Christ, whose holiness has struck him with terrible force; ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord!’ Our Lord does no such thing. He does not touch him with a burning coal, but says to him, ‘fear not!’ and then He gives Peter his commission: ‘from now on you wll be catching men’. These words Jesus also addresses to James and John, and so, hearing these words, the three men leave their boats, and they follow Him.’
So, too, Paul recounts how he, too, received a commission as Apostle from Christ in person, saying to the Corinthians in today’s second reading that Jesus had appeared to the Apostles after His resurrection to renew their mission to preach throughout the world. He adds that ‘Last of all, as to one untimely born, [Jesus] appeared to me.’ We know what he is talking about here: his vision at the gates of Damascus…. This was Paul’s great commission as an Apostle too.
In all these cases, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, James and John – their commission as God’s special ministers and servants is given them as a result of a tremendous experience of God’s holiness. That experience is not given to everyone, but instead we have the liturgy in which at every Mass we join the Seraphim in their great hymn of praise, singing ‘Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Sabaoth’. In that wonderful hymn we are given communion with the great spirits around God’s throne in order to prepare us for the moment that awaits us all when we will stand face to face with the all-holy God, our Creator, Redeemer and Lord. May our lot be with the angels and the saints in eternity.
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