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Isaiah

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"In that day, Arbiter over all,
God will judge the nations.
They will beat their swords into plowshares,
their spears into pruning knives.
Nevermore war
Never again!
Come, let us walk
In the light of Yahweh!"
Isaiah 2:1-5

Father Berrigan and his community finds in these clearly pacifist and eschatalogical verses from the Prophet Isaiah a clarion cry to conversion. Whereas it speaks of a future "they" who shall act so righteously and courageously following God's Law, it ends with an invitation to us, here and now, to enter the path to conversion which leads unto that bright and glorious day when we at long last dedicate our efforts not to war but to development and to respect for life in peace, when we finally realize the true meaning of Jesus Christ's clear commandment to Love our Enemy, and join all together in the arduous task of providing sustenance for all.

Our Holy Father His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI in his present World Peace Day pronouncement clearly and urgently calls us to the same, here and now, this very year, despite the present unending imperialist warfare which leaves so many poor, homeless, hungry, destitute and refugee, tearing families apart and not providing the environment for respecting human life with dignity and peace, which neglects those in our own hemisphere and in our own nation who suffer great natural and man-made calamities and disasters in order to fund their materialistically profitable warfare.

Isaiah is perhaps the most often heard section of the Old Testament in our new Roman Catholic tricyclical series of readings. Pacifist and priest, the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan, SJ, here opens for us the fullness of the concrete and mystical meaning of the eschatalogical vision of this lonesome, despised yet powerful prophet of peace and justice. Father Berrigan concludes his introduction to this theological treatise of peace with these words:

"In this book I comment on certain of the crucial passages from Isaiah, using my own translation. In reading these portions one may reflect on Isaiah's prophecies against Judah, his call to be a prophet, his visions that carry the hope of the child named Emmanuel, his word of judgment and hope regarding the nations, and his portrayal of the faithful servant of God. Isaiah lived in a time of whetted swords and rusted plowshares, of immense violence and social conflict and neglect of the poor. Then the oracle came to him - swords into plowshares! What does Isaiah have to say to us? (p.4)"

Now, in our time of exhorbitant generosity to the arms merchants and mercenaries such as Blackwater, Bechtel and Halliburton, a time in which all goes unquestionably for a questionable endless war while we refuse health care to our own children, a time when religion is perverted to the claims of an as always unholy and unjust war, when we close our doors to the homeless and the immigrant and the refugee while seeking to enslave their eager labor, when we torture our fellow people under a new and a lying name, when we break the commandments and the covenant of God in every way possible while claiming we do not, we must now hear again and again the word of Isaiah.

For a textual critical methodology we do well to turn to Isaiah 1-39: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. For the truth and the power of "What does Isaiah have to say to us?" we must hear now the Reverend Father Daniel Berrigan, and act for peace in every way, for the Prince of Peace now born among us as prophesized in Isaiah.

"Hear my voice!
Of what import, what value
these sacrifices of yours,
innumerable - useless, repugnant!
Why to and fro, processions
witless about the temple?
The smoke of your incense
stinks in my nostrils!
New moon or waning, Sabbath,
pilgrimage -
I hate with my being!
Your prayer wheels hum and whir
in vagrant winds.
You stretch your arms to me,
I turn aside in disgust -
your hands reeking of blood.
( . . .)
Turn, turn, turn!
Seek justice,
succor the oppressed,
cherish the defenseless!"
(Isaiah 1:10-15, 17. Please see the rest as presented and commentated brilliantly)

This review can only hope to give a tiny glimpse of the rich light here within this commentary. I challenge every Catholic before they condemn it to read it, and to live it, and thus earn truly the proud name of faithful and practicing Catholic, through covenantal conversion to peace and compassion in practice, as own Our Holy Father Pope Benedict XVI today exhorts us in his World Peace Day Address, calling as he does for for peace on earth, including peace for all creation, the ecology and the cosmos.

Take and read, for this is His Body. Excellent lectio divina, highly recommended to all Catholics, all Christians and all who seek the realization of God's Reign in ultimate and merciful justice and compassionate peace. And as our Holy Father Saint Benedict wrote in his Holy and gentle and peaceful and friendly Rule of Saint Benedict in English, may God bring us there altogether again.

The innocent are as innocent of this or that religion as of this or that skepticism or evil. And the righteous in America today---& in the global political-economic society of which it's a part---are at least as likely to be skeptics of the Enlightenment tradition, out of which the USA & other more-or-less democracies emerged, after all, as to belong to this or that church, or to be immersed in the Bible, whether Old or New Testament, Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish versions. Or, for that matter, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, or smaller groups sharing a text or belief system---or they may be sampling or immersed in those other belief systems, texts, communities.

So Isaiah, especially in the language of, say, the King James Bible of about 1600---which is great (stunning, useful, en-couraging) stuff, alternating with awful stuff (contradictions, chauvinism, cruelty, political spin-doctoring)---is foreign & off-putting. Too bad.

Berrigan's translation brings us a brother, sufferering from finding himself within a society we realize is all too like our own, from resisting joining in, & from speaking truths that would greatly improve the situation if only others listened, but it's clear that they're not listening. Familiar?

Such truth-telling, & concisely expressed & consistent indignation are in short supply, however many centuries have presented the opportunity for (& obstacles to) articulating, recording, & circulating it. Such brothers are rare & terribly valuable.

Isaiah no longer being among us, it's only to Daniel Berrigan I now say, thank you!