Homilies on Isaiah 6

On the text, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” etc., up to the place where it says, “and they turn, and I heal them” (Isa 6). 1. Isaiah, having seen the Lord of hosts sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, and having seen also the seraphim standing around him, and having received forgiveness of sins through the fire which, brought from the altar, purged his lips by its touch, says that he heard the voice of the Lord, not commanding but rousing and saying: “Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people?” Then he says he answered the Lord: “Here am I, send me.” Placed at this passage, and searching what is written, I find that Moses did one thing and Isaiah another. For Moses, chosen to lead the people out of the land of Egypt, says, “Provide another whom you may send,” and even seems to contradict God. But Isaiah, not chosen, but hearing, “Whom shall I send, and who will go?” says, “Here am I, send me.” It is fitting, then, to compare spiritual things with spiritual and to ask which of the two did better: Moses, who after he was chosen refused, or Isaiah, who, not even chosen, offered himself to minister to the people. For I do not know whether anyone, attending to the contrast of the matters that appears in each, can say that Moses did the same as Isaiah. I have boldly compared two holy and blessed men, and judged and said that Moses acted more modestly than Isaiah. For Moses considered the greatness of the task: to lead the people in bringing them out of the land of Egypt, and to fight against the enchantments and sorceries of the Egyptians. Therefore he says: “Provide another whom you may send.” But this man, not waiting to hear what he would be ordered to say, as if he had been chosen, says: “Here am I, send me.” Hence, because, not knowing what he would be ordered to say, as if he had been chosen, he said, “Here am I, send me,” he is ordered to say things undesirable to the speaker. Was it not undesirable, on being ordered at once to prophesy, to begin with curses, saying: “With the ear you will hear and not understand, and seeing you will look and not see; for the heart of this people has grown fat,” and the rest? Perhaps, then, if it may be said boldly, he received the wages of rashness and boldness, in being ordered to say things he did not wish to prophesy. And since we have compared Isaiah and Moses, let us set up another comparison close to it, of Isaiah and Jonah. The one is sent to preach the overthrow of the Ninevites after three days, and he is unwilling, not wishing to set out because of the evils of the city. The other, not waiting for what he would be ordered to say, says: “Here am I, send me.” It is good not to leap forward to the dignities and offices and ministries of the church that are from God, but to imitate Moses and say with him: “Provide another whom you may send.” For whoever wishes to be saved, even if he presides, comes not to rule over the church but to serve the church, if we must also cite the Gospel: “The rulers of the nations lord it over them, and those who have authority over them are called magistrates. But it shall not be so among you; for rulers shall not lord it among you, but whoever wishes to be greater among you shall be the least of all; whoever wishes to be first shall be last of all.” Whoever is called to the episcopate, then, is called not to rule but to the service of the whole church. If you wish to believe from the Scriptures that in the church the one who presides is the servant of all, let the Savior and Lord himself persuade you, who became, great and such as he was, in the midst of his disciples, not as one reclining but as one serving. For, taking a towel after he had taken off his garments, he girded himself, and, pouring water into a basin, began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which he was girded. And teaching what kind of servants the rulers ought to be, he says: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If, then, your Lord and Teacher has washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet.” The ruler of the church, then, is called to service, so that from this service he may go to the heavenly throne, as it is written: “You will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Hear also Paul, so illustrious a man, saying that he was the servant of all believers: “I am the least of the apostles,” he says; “I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” And if this seems to prove not his service but only his humility, hear him saying: “We became little ones in your midst, as a nurse cherishes her children, though we could have been burdensome as apostles of Christ.” It is fitting, then, that we be imitators of the humble words and deeds of the Lord himself and of his apostles, and do what Moses did, so that even if someone is called to rule, he may say: “Provide another whom you may send.” He says to God: “I am not worthy since yesterday and the day before; I am thin of voice and slow of tongue.” And because he said humbly to God, “I am thin of voice and slow of tongue,” he hears from God: “Who gave man a mouth, and who made the deaf and the mute, the seeing and the blind? Is it not I, the Lord God?” Believe God, consecrate yourself to him. Though you are thin of voice and slow of tongue, hand yourself over to the word of God. You will say afterward: “I opened my mouth and drew in the Spirit.” These things are said because of Isaiah's saying, “Here am I, send me.” But let us also take his side in part. For when he had already received grace from God, he wished not to receive it in vain but to use it for what was needed. Seeing the seraphim, seeing the Lord of hosts sitting upon a throne high and lifted up, he said: “O wretched me, for I am pierced; for being a man and having unclean lips, I dwell also in the midst of a people having unclean lips; I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts, with my eyes.” Saying this and making himself wretched, he deserves help, God receiving his humility. What is this help? “One of the seraphim was sent to me,” he says, “and he had in the tongs a coal which he had brought from the altar, and he touched my lips and said: Behold, I have taken away your iniquities and purged your sins all around.” He obtained the benefit, was made clean, and received forgiveness of sins. When he heard, “Whom shall I send to the people, and who will go for us?” he did not dare to say, “Here am I, send me,” on account of his earlier conscience, but when he had heard, “Behold, I have taken away your iniquities.” So, since the saints are pierced, and the question is raised between Moses and Isaiah, let us give satisfaction for Moses and also for Isaiah, giving them their share from the Scriptures. Moses did not receive forgiveness of sins, so as to say, as one already aware that he was cleansed, “Send me”; that is why he says, “Provide another whom you may send”; for he had on his conscience the killing of the Egyptian; and perhaps, as a man, he knew he had certain other sins too; therefore he refuses. But this man asks for the ministry not as righteous by nature but as one who had obtained grace. So too Moses, if he had received a similar grace and heard, “Behold, I have taken away your iniquities,” and this, “I have purged your sins all around,” would perhaps never have said, “Provide another whom you may send.” Both Moses in refusing and Isaiah in saying, “Here am I, send me,” have some reason, then. 3. But let us see also what the Lord commands him to say to the people: “Go and say to the people: With the ear you will hear and not understand, and seeing you will look and not see. For the heart of this people has grown fat, and with their ears they have heard heavily, and they have closed their eyes, lest at any time they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and turn, and I save them.” He knows that hearing a word is twofold, and recognizes a double state, that is, one of them bodily, the other spiritual; or else he prophesies to the people concerning what would happen at the coming of Christ: that there would be a time when they would hear and not understand. For when they heard my Lord Jesus Christ, they heard only the sound of what was said, not the sense. And this is clear from the fact that outside he spoke to the people in parables, but explained them to the disciples in private. And he prophesies what came to pass: “With the ear you will hear and not understand.” That this was prophesied to the people about the Lord's coming, the Savior himself says: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying: With the ear you will hear and not understand.” Let us grant, then, that the people listening to the Lord's words could not know what was said. But let us see what follows: “And seeing you will see and not know.” Not if someone saw what the Savior was doing could he at once, seeing it, understand why it was done. For example (let us take an example), he washed the disciples' feet; and they saw clearly how the Teacher washed the disciples' feet; others who were present saw too, but only what was being done, not why it was being done. For the washing of feet, by which the Word of God washed the disciples' feet, was a figure. Therefore the Savior says to Peter, who refused and said, “You shall not wash my feet” — what does he say? “What I am doing you do not know now, but you will know afterward.” “But what are you doing now?” says Peter. “I see you washing our feet, and the basin set out, you girded with a towel and serving us, and wiping our feet.” But because this was not a bodily matter but a spiritual one, the Savior, stripped, pours spiritual water into the basin, according to the Scriptures, and washes his disciples' feet, so that, when they are clean, they may go up to him who says, “I am the way,” and not full of dust, which he wished them to shake off against the unworthy, who do not receive peace and are not worthy of what was said. And because this was what was signified, he says: “What I am doing you do not know now, but you will know afterward.” And this was what was said to the rest too: “You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. If, then, I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's.” Does he say this, then, so that a bishop, pouring water into a basin, taking off his garments and girding himself with a towel while I stretch out my feet, should wash my feet? Since, he says, “you ought to wash one another's feet.” If this is what is said, none of you will keep the commandment. For no one, deacon or presbyter or bishop, takes a towel and washes the feet of whoever comes. But if you understand what is written, those truly blessed bishops who serve the church pour water from the Scriptures into the basin of the soul, which is according to the Scriptures, and try to wash and rinse and cast off the dirt of the disciples' feet. And so bishops keep the commandment, imitating Jesus; and so do presbyters. Would that I too may now receive water that can wash the feet of your soul, and that each of you, when he has been washed, may say: “I have washed my feet; how shall I soil them?” For the bride says this in the Song of Songs, not showing bodily feet washed but feet that do not stumble. Of them Solomon says: “Let your foot not stumble.” And of them it is written in the Psalms: “But my feet had almost been moved.” And of the widows who are enrolled in the churches: “if she has washed the feet of the saints.” If you wish to hear more plainly how a widow washes the feet of the saints, hear Paul in another place giving rules for widows and saying: “teaching well, so that they may make the young women chaste,” washing the dirt from the feet of the young women. And those widows are worthy of the church's honor who wash the feet of the saints with the word of spiritual teaching, of saints who are not men but women. For he does not permit a woman to teach, nor to rule over a man. He wants women to teach well, so that they may persuade not young men but young women to chastity; for it is unfitting that a woman become a man's teacher; but rather that they persuade the young women to chastity, and to love their husbands and children. Let us learn, then, to wash the disciples' feet. These things have been said because of the saying, “Seeing you will see and not know.” For if anything was done by the Savior, by those who did not understand it was seen according to the body, not according to its meaning; but by those who understood it was seen both with the eyes and with the understanding; so that the saying, “Seeing you will see and not know,” was fulfilled not on those who see blessedly but on sinners. And let us pray that, seeing all the things in the Gospels, we may see them doubly: how they were done according to the body when our Savior came to earth. For each thing done in the body was a figure and type of things to come. For instance, a certain man blind from birth recovered his sight; but truly this man blind from birth was the people of the Gentiles, to whom the Savior restored sight, anointing his eyes with his saliva and sending him to Siloam, which is interpreted “Sent.” For he sent those whom he anointed with the Spirit to believe, to Siloam, that is, to the apostles as teachers, for which reason it is written of Siloam that it is interpreted “Sent.” And whenever we begin to be visited by Jesus, so as to recover the eyes of the soul, he sends us to Siloam, that is, “Sent.” So let each of us, when he reads what was done in the Gospels, pray that “Seeing you will see and not know” may not be fulfilled in him. But if, as the simpler suppose, the things that were done were done not for our sake but only for their own, and were not examples of something else, let them explain what sense the saying, “Seeing you will see and not know,” has. For if the things that were seen did not have some hidden sense, so that they might be looked upon spiritually as well as with bodily eyes, he would never have said, “Seeing you will see and not know.” To prove these things we shall bring forward the testimony of another passage from the Gospel, which, according to those who follow only the letter, is false. The Savior and our Lord says to the disciples in the Gospel according to John: “If you believe, you will do not only the things I do, but you will do greater things than these.” Let us see, then, whether the disciples did any greater things. What is greater than raising the dead? Who, I do not say of us, but of the apostles, raised the dead? History relates that Paul raised Eutychus from the dead, and Peter Tabitha, which is interpreted Dorcas. These and others of the kind can be found: where are the greater things? The Savior also made the blind see again, and, what is greater, those born so. Let them produce those blind from the womb whom they have seen healed by the hands of the apostles. And whoever seeks can find countless other things from the Gospels which neither the apostles nor their successors did greater than these. But the word of the Scriptures said something like this: “Than these bodily things that I have done, you will do greater. I raised from the dead bodily; you will raise from the dead spiritually. I poured this sensible light into the blind; you will give spiritual light to those who do not see.” And to this day I see these signs, greater than the bodily ones that Jesus did, being done through the most faithful disciples of Jesus. Do not the blind now see, and the lame walk, and the lepers are cleansed, and the rest come about? If someone who yesterday was blinded, approaching an idol as if to God, today calls on the living God, leaving his former ways, does he not see? Does not he who yesterday was lame because of sin, now, through the disciples' teaching, taught the true way, walk with a firm foot? He who yesterday had a withered hand, idle for doing good, today, receiving his hand, has it living. If you see someone defiled, having leprosy in his soul, suddenly repent, pierced by the word of teaching, do not be ashamed to say that it is greater that this spiritual leper has been cleansed than that someone was once cleansed in the flesh. And this discourse has played this prelude rather at length, wishing to show what is the saying, “And seeing you will see and not understand.” And what is the cause of hearing and not understanding, of seeing and not seeing? “The heart of this people,” it says, “has grown fat.” Since it is necessary to understand where this comes from too: bodily and spiritual fatness are not the same, nor are bodily and spiritual thinness the same. For what is fat in the body comes about in the flesh, and a fleshly heart does me no harm if it grows fat, nor does it profit me if it grows thin from illness or any other cause. I think the fleshly heart of those who are held by fear becomes such. For as all waste away from sickness, so they say the fatness and whatever is fat around their heart grows thin. What harm, then, does it do me if my bodily heart grows fat? Grant that my heart grows thin: what profit to me from that? But the ruling part of our soul is named by the same word as the bodily heart, as is clear from what is said in the Gospel: “Blessed are the pure in heart.” For those are not pure in heart who have no blood or any bodily matter within; but it was said, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” for “Blessed are those who have a pure ruling part of the soul.” The ruling part is named for the heart. Since, then, the ruling part of our soul is said to be in the bodily heart, our heart is either clean or unclean: unclean when evil thoughts come out of it, murders, adulteries, thefts, false witness, blasphemies; clean when there are holy thoughts and divine understanding and a pure mind. For this reason it must be judged that the heart of the one who is saved is said to be made thin, made thin by the Holy Spirit, and the heart of the one who sins is made fat and choked by malice. For it is said of the Holy Spirit who is in wisdom that he is manifold, subtle, mobile, and that the righteous receives this subtle spirit. For this spirit differs from all intelligent, pure, subtle spirits. The ruling part of the heart, then, is thin when it is spiritual, but fat when it is thickened by the fault of bodily matter, full of bodily thoughts which deserve blame. So it is said: “The heart of this people has grown fat.” Understand that the heart has grown fat because there is nothing in it but human and carnal anxieties. For as the matter of the body is fat, so also are bodily understandings and thoughts. Since, then, two things have been set down, that the heart grows fat from worldly cares and grows thin from spiritual care, when someone thinks of the things of the Lord, casting fatness from his heart, and knowing that if his heart grows fat he will neither receive the words of God nor see the mysteries of salvation: let us too lay aside fatness and take up the thinness spoken of, so that we too may say as the prophet: “My soul has thirsted for you; how manifoldly my flesh for you! In a desert land, pathless and waterless, so in the sanctuary I have appeared to you”: not as though I were holy by nature, but if the prudence of the flesh wastes away, and if the prudence of the flesh has wasted away, then I shall appear to him in the sanctuary. This in explanation of the saying, “The heart of this people has grown fat.” It follows: “And with their ears they have heard heavily.” It does me no harm if I hear heavily in body, nor is this a cause for me not to hear the words of God. For as bodily blindness does me no harm if my soul has not been blinded, so neither lightness nor heaviness of bodily hearing hinders me at all. There is another heaviness of hearing which harms a person's soul. What is this heaviness that is in the hearing of the soul? Sin, according to the Scriptures, is heavy. Therefore one who feels his sins says: “As a heavy burden they have weighed upon me.” And because iniquity is heavy, it sits upon a talent of lead, as is written in Zechariah. And the Egyptians were not sunk like lead in the mighty water because they had heavy bodies, but because their souls were weighed down by the talent of lead on which iniquity sat; therefore they sank like lead in the mighty water. Heaviness of the ears, then, is from sin, and lightness from righteousness. What makes the hearing hear not heavily but lightly? The wings of the Word, the wings of virtue. For the wings of the Word bring much lightness. “Who will give me wings like a dove, and I will fly and be at rest?” The prophet says this, praying not to receive the bodily wings of a dove, but the wings of the dove, the Holy Spirit. And again Solomon says of the rich man: “He will make himself wings like an eagle and return to the house of him who rules over him.” If, then, we receive wings, we shall hear lightly. But if we sin and are negligent about our wings, and our feathers fall out, we shall be weighed down and hear heavily. With their ears, then, sinners have heard heavily. All the Jews who then heard the Savior heard him heavily; therefore they did not believe. And to this day all who, hearing the Scriptures, do not hear the word spiritually, which is light, but the letter, which is heavy and kills, hear heavily. And so Scripture is heard in two ways: by one who does not understand what is said it is heard heavily; by one who understands it, it is heard not only not heavily but rather sharply. Hence also one who becomes understanding becomes a hearer. And there is something else prophesied of the people of the Jews, and of all of us, if we sin: “And they have closed their eyes, lest at any time their eyes see, and they hear with their ears and understand with their heart.” Of those who do not see, some are blind and do not see because of blindness; some are in darkness and therefore do not see. But others are neither in darkness nor blind, but do not see because they close their eyes. And divine Scripture knows these differences, which belong to the ruling part of our heart. For the Savior says to those who are in chains, “Come out”; and to those who are in darkness, that it may be revealed to them; and “to those sitting in the region and shadow of death, a light has dawned.” These did not see because they were in darkness until the light dawned on them. “You deaf, hear, and you blind, look.” And these did not see before because they were naturally blind. But those who are outside these, and who, compared with the blind and with those in darkness, are much worse, are those who do not see because they have closed their eyes of their own accord. That this is as we have asserted, the Savior will be my witness, saying: “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you say, ‘We see’; your sin remains.” And well he says, “you say, ‘We see’”; for truly he says that they see and have the possibility of seeing, but closing their eyes they do not see. And whenever you see a soul that is clever at understanding, quick and eager, not meditating on the words of God, know that it does not see what is contained in the Scriptures not because of blindness, nor because it is in darkness, but because it closes its eyes. If, then, you hear divine Scripture saying to those who close their eyes, “Open your eyes and see what is right,” open your eyes from what you had closed, and then you will be able to see what is right and consider the light of truth. And it accuses those of whom it complains for closing their eyes so as not to see. But it does not say this, that it is never good to close the eyes of the soul. For it is good, as Isaiah has made plain, saying in what follows: “Who will declare to you the eternal place? He who walks in righteousness and speaks the true and right way, stopping his ears so as not to hear the judgment of blood, and shutting his eyes so as not to see iniquity.” If, by opening the eyes of the soul, I am going to hear and perceive foul talk, it is better to close my hearing than to hear what harms. When, then, shall I close it? When evil things are spoken, so that I do not even understand them. When are the words of God to be seen? When we turn and God heals us, sending the word that heals those who wish to be cured in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.