The Advent in Isaiah
Fr. David Curry has compiled his Advent Meditations on “The Advent in Isaiah” into a single pdf document, which can be downloaded by clicking here.
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The Advent in Isaiah: Part 2
This is the second of a two-part series on “The Advent in Isaiah”. The first part is posted here. Footnotes have been omitted from the following text. A pdf document containing the full text, with footnotes, of both parts can be downloaded here.
The Advent in Isaiah: Part II
Anthony Sparrow’s observation that Isaiah is “the most evangelical of the Prophets” is amply demonstrated in the pageant of readings that belong to the liturgies of Advent and Christmas. It is not just that he points us to the coming of God’s holy Word and Son but that he shapes our understanding of the meaning of Christ’s Incarnation.
Central to that understanding is the role and place of Mary, the Virgin Mother. “In the sixth month,” Luke tells us, “the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a Virgin espoused to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the Virgin’s name was Mary.” The story of the Annunciation is inseparable from the Advent and is read during the Advent Ember Days (BCP, p. 101).
Luke’s account of the Annunciation prefaces his narrative of Christ’s birth. It complements Matthew’s infancy narrative about how the “birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise,” noting that Mary was found with child of the Holy Ghost “before [she and Joseph] came together,” and concluding parenthetically that “all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Behold, a Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a Son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” Matthew is quoting Isaiah 7. 14 from the Greek Septuagint directly, adding only the interpretation of the name, “Emmanuel”. Luke, too, is echoing Isaiah, changing only that his name shall be called Jesus. In the Christian understanding, Jesus is Emmanuel.
The King James’ translation of Matthew 1. 23, where Matthew quotes from Isaiah, varies a little from that of Isaiah 7.14 and in interesting and instructive ways. The King James translation of Isaiah 7.14 is “behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son”. In Matthew 1.23, it is “behold, a Virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son.” In Luke’s account of the Annunciation, Gabriel announces to Mary that “behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son” which is closer to the translation of Isaiah but with the addition of “in thy womb” which is more faithful, in a literal way, to the Greek. The word “womb” is part of the Greek expression for being pregnant, which means, literally, “to have in the womb.” Luke has used the Greek verb “to conceive” in his account and this word, in particular, has carried over into the rich devotional traditions of song and motet in the Latin West, for instance, in the “Ecce virgo concipiet,” set to a great number of different musical settings. These variations bring out something of the special wonder of the Annunciation and the role of Isaiah’s prophecy in shaping that devotional and doctrinal understanding.
The Advent in Isaiah: Part 1
This is the first of a two-part series on “The Advent in Isaiah”. The second part is posted here. A pdf document containing the full text of both parts can be downloaded here.
The Advent in Isaiah: Part I
Isaiah is “the most evangelical of the prophets,” a seventeenth century Anglican Divine, Anthony Sparrow, observes. And, certainly, of all the prophets it is safe to say that Isaiah is, perhaps, the best known and, perhaps, even the most read of all of the Books of the Prophets, at least in the liturgies of the Church, and the one prophet, too, whose words have inspired some of the greatest music of all times. One has only to think of Handel’s Messiah or many of the Bach cantatas.
In the Advent season particularly, readings from The Book of the Prophet Isaiah stand out and compel our attention. Readings from Isaiah, for instance, are prominent in the wonderful service of Advent Lessons and Carols. In the season of the preparation for the celebration of Christ’s holy birth, images and phrases from Isaiah help to shape our understanding of the mystery and the wonder of the Incarnation. For that reason The Book of Isaiah is read at the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer and in the Sunday Offices throughout the Advent and Christmas seasons and into Epiphany. There is, it seems, a prophetic conjunction between Isaiah and the central themes of the Christian Gospel.
The Book of the Prophet Isaiah spans at least two centuries and while it is all collectively The Book of Isaiah, it is probably the work of several writers over several centuries from the latter half of the 8th century to the latter half of the 6th century BC. The scholarly consensus, more or less, is that The Book of Isaiah is best appreciated as three books or one book having three distinct sections: First Isaiah, chapters 1-39; Deutero-Isaiah, chapters 40-55; and, Trito-Isaiah, chapters 56-66. Readings from each of these three divisions of the book figure prominently in the Christian Church’s understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation.
We may take four passages as examples of ‘the Advent in Isaiah’: Isaiah 11.1-9; Isaiah 60.1-6; Isaiah 7.10-15; and Isaiah 40.1-11. The first two will be the focus for this session; the last two at the next.
The Rector’s Advent & Christmas Note
Dear Friends,
Advent prepares us for the celebration of the great mystery of Christ’s holy birth in the humble and lowly scene of Bethlehem. It prepares us for the great gift, the greatest gift of all, the mystery of Emmanuel, God with us in the special intimacy of Jesus Christ.
It is the gift through which all gifts are given. God’s great generosity, the outpouring of the divine life in Jesus Christ, contrasts with the fearful but too easy narrowness of our own lives. I know, there are no end of anxieties and worries, especially for those on fixed incomes, for those whose retirement years are based on diminished returns from investments, for those who are scrambling with several jobs to make ends meet, and for those who juggle jobs and family. And let us not forget the unemployed.
Generosity is not simply about who has how much and how much more or how much less. It is about giving out of the spirit of giving and without counting the cost. It is about giving out of love for God in the free and wonderful outpouring of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, the Word of God become man for us and for our salvation. The Crucified Christ challenges us all with the power and the poignancy of his suffering and death which brings such wonder and grace to our lives. His gift gives us a way to face all manner of hardships.
We have done remarkably well in this year under the circumstances of changing demographics, a dismal economy and constant yet necessary repairs. Our challenge is to see if we can’t continue to be sustainable as well as to contribute to the life of the Church beyond ourselves; in short, to end the year strongly and as well, if not better, than last year.
The roofing projects, mostly completed, are of the greatest significance for the long term viability of the Parish. In the short term, though, we need your generosity of spirit. We would like not to have to tap into capital. We would like to be able to make some sort of contribution to the work and life of the wider Church.
We have had to undertake more in the way of roofing this year than anticipated. Like everyone else we face mounting costs and expenditures. Because Christmas falls on a Sunday, so does the Octave Day of Christmas. That means that the Sunday after Christmas is New Years’, the beginning of another year. Our effort is to end the year strongly and for that we need your help. It will all come down to the Christmas offerings before January 1st.
I appeal to your generosity. Every little bit counts. Our hope is to end the year with a little bit more so as to give more.
With every blessing in the joy of Christ’s Holy Birth,
(Rev’d) David Curry
St. Nicholas, Bishop
The collect for today, the Feast of St. Nicholas (d. c. 326), Bishop of Myra (source):
Almighty Father, lover of souls,
who didst choose thy servant Nicholas
to be a bishop in the Church,
that he might give freely out of the treasures of thy grace:
make us mindful of the needs of others
and, as we have received, so teach us also to give;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Epistle: 1 St. John 4:7-14
The Gospel: St. Mark 10:13-16
Artwork: The St. Nicholas stained glass was made by the firm of James Powell and Sons, Middlesex, England, and installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, St John’s, Newfoundland, in 1951. Photograph taken by admin, 7 September 2009.
Michaelmas Meditation
“There was war in heaven”
Somehow angels are very much with us. They are very much a part of the biblical and spiritual landscape of the great religions of the world. They are found in the Jewish Scriptures, in the Christian New Testament, and in the Koran. They are present from creation to redemption, as it were. There is even in our contemporary secular culture a yearning for a spiritual company and a sense that we are somehow more than cosmic orphans cast adrift in wholly material universe.
But perhaps you still protest and reasonably so. “Are not angels simply the product of our imaginations, the creatures of our minds, as it were?” Creatures of the mind? Better to say creatures who are mind, wholly mind. The angels are pure intellectual beings of immaterial substance. They are the ordered and distinct thoughts of God in creation, the moving principles of his goodness and truth, the invisible reasons for the visible things of the world. And since the intellect transcends the sense, angels cannot be seen except by the mind in thought. The angels are creatures who are mind that only minds can think. Angels belong at the very least to an intellectual tradition that connects with Plato’s Forms and Aristotle’s Spheres; in short, to an intellectual understanding of the universe.
Angels, let us allow, are thinkable, but what does it mean to think with them? After all, there are endless numbers of things which are “able to be thought”. The ancient Collect for Michaelmas speaks of God as having “ordained and constituted the services of Angels and men in a wonderful order”. The services of angels are instituted of God and joined with the services of men in a wonderful order. Somehow thinking God means thinking with the angels who are God’s thoughts in creation. We are part of a spiritual community that is far larger than we realize.