From: Isaiah 8:23 - 9:3
Anguish caused by early defeats
The prince of Peace
[2] The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness
on them has light shined.
[3] Thou hast multiplied the nation,
thou hast increased its joy;
they rejoice before thee
as with joy at the harvest,
as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.
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Commentary:
8:21-22. The fear caused by news of Assyria’s growing strength increased even more once Judah began to feel its effects. This passage seems to refer to the deportation of the Glileans by Tiglath-pileser III in 732. Very succinctly it describes the distress of those who make their way into exile and can see for themselves the havoc caused by their enemies all over their country. This depressing panarama will be offset by the joyful oracle that follows.
9:1-7. At this point, though not yet very clearly, we begin to see the figure of King Hezekiah, who, unlike his father Ahaz, was a pious man who put all his trust in the Lord. After Galilee was laid waste by Tiglath-pileser III of Assyria, and its population subsequently deported (cf. 8:21-22), Hezekiah of Judah would reconquer that region, which would recover its splendour for a period. All this gave grounds for hope again.
This oracle may have a connexion with the Immanuel prophecy (7:1-17), and the child with messianic prerogatives that has been born (cf. 9:6-7) could be the child that Isaiah prophesied about (cf. 7:14). For this reason, 9:1-7 is seen as the second oracle of the Immanuel cycle. This “child” that is born, the son given to us, is a gift from God (9:6), because it is a sign that God is present among his people. The Hebrew text attributes four qualities to the child which seem to embrace all the typical features of Israel’s illustrious forebears – the wisdom of Solomon (cf. 1 Kings 3: “Wonderful Counsellor”), the prowess of David (cf. 1 Sam 7: “Mighty God”), the administrative skills of Moses (cf. Ex 18:13-26) as liberator, guide and father of the people (cf. Deut 34:10-12), (“Everlasting Father”), and the virtues of the early patriarchs, who made peace pacts (cf. Gen 21:22-34; 26:15-35; 23:6), (“Prince of peace”). In the old Latin Vulgate, the translation gave six features (“Admirabilis, Consiliarius, Deus, Frotis, Pater futuri saeculi, Princeps pacis”); these have found their way into the liturgy. The New Vulgate has reverted to the Hebrews text. Either way, what we have here are titles that Semite nations applied to the reigning monarch; but, taken together, they go far beyond what befitted Hezekiah or any other king of Judah. Therefore, Christian tradition has interpreted them as being appropriate only for Jesus. St Bernard, for example, explains the justificiation for these names as follows: “He is Wonderful in his birth, Counsellor in his preaching, God in his works, Mighty in the Passion, Everlasting Father in the resurrection, and Prince of Peace in eternal happiness” (Sermones de diversis, 53, 1).
Because these names are applied to Jesus, the short-term conquest of Galilee by Hezekiah is seen as being only an announcement of the definitive salvation brought about by Christ. In the Gospels we find echoes of this oracle in a number of passages that refer to Jesus. When Luke narrates the Annunciation by the angel to Mary (Lk 1:31-33) we hear that the son that she will conceive and give birth to will receive “the throne of this father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Lk 1:32b-33; cf. Is 9:7). And in the account about the shepherds of Bethlehem, they are told that “to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord …” (Lk 2:11-12; cf. Is 9:6). St Matthew sees the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee (Mt 4:12-17) as the fulfillment of this Isaian oracle (cf. Is 9:1): the lands that in the prophet’s time were laid waste and saw ethnic cleansing and transplantation were the first to receive the light of salvation from the Messiah.
From: 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17
An Appeal for Unity
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Commentary:
10-17. St Paul takes the Corinthians to task for the strife in their community—not, it seems, quarrels over matters of doctrines but minor disagreements due to preferenges for certain teachers. Even so, the Apostle is very much against factions, and he starts his letter by stressing that unity is essential to the Church.
He makes four points, as it were—an appeal (v. 10); a description of the state of affairs in Corinth (vv. 11-12); a doctrinal reflection:
Christ cannot be divided (v. 13); and a summary of his (Paul’s) ministry (vv. 14-17).
His appeal is virtually a warning: I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Apostle only calls on the name of our Lord when he has very serious counsel to offer (cf. 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6); he makes it clear that it is a very grave matter to put the unity of the Church at risk. Each of these groups in Corinth is appealing to whichever authority it prefers—without Paul, Apollos or Cephas having any say in the matter. Christ cannot be divided and therefore neither can the Church, Christ’s body (cf. 1 Cor 12:12-31).
Finally, St Paul points out their feeble grounds for basing divisions on personal relationships: very few of them can claim to have been
baptized by him, because his concentration has been on evangelization.
This entire passage is a defense of Church unity. Throughout the centuries the Church has confessed this truth of faith—from the
Apostles’ Creed (”I believe in the Holy Catholic Church”) right down to the “Creed of the People of God” of Paul VI: “We believe that the Church which Christ founded and for which he prayed is indefectibly one in faith and in worship, and one in the communion of a single hierarchy’ (no. 21).
10. “That you all agree...in the same mind and the same judgment”: St Paul is not calling for mere external unity or just living peaceably or being sure to come together for certain liturgical ceremonies. He wants something that goes much deeper than that: the concord that should reign among them should stem from their being of one mind, from feeling the same way about things. In saying this he obviously does not mean to restrict the freedom every Christian enjoys as far as earthly affairs are concerned: it is the unity of the Church that Paul is discussing, and in that area there is no room for factions among Christians (cf. v. 11). Differences, diversity, which do not affect the unity of the Church are something lawful and positively good.
One basic dimension of Church unity is unity of faith. That is why the Fathers and the Magisterium have borrowed from what St Paul says here, to show that genuine progress in understanding the content of truths of faith must always keep in line with earlier understanding of the same: “any meaning of the sacred dogmas that has once been declared by holy Mother Church must always be retained; and there must never be any deviation from that meaning on the specious grounds of a more profound understanding. ‘Therefore, let there be growth [...] and all possible progress in understanding, knowledge, and wisdom whether in single individuals or in the whole body, in each man as well as in the entire Church, according to the stage of their development but only within
proper limits, that is, in the same doctrine, in the same meaning, and in the same purport [”eodem sensu eademque sententia]’ (St Vincent of Lerins, “Commonitorium”, 28)” (Vatican I, “Dei Filius”, chap. 4).
11-12. St Paul now goes on to discuss the dissensions (v. 10) which “Chloe’s people” have told him about. We must presume that Chloe was a woman well known in the church at Corinth; and obviously there is no question of secret denunciations but of a well-intentioned effort to bring to Paul’s attention a problem requiring solution. Chloe’s people might have been members of her family or servants of hers who had visited the Apostle in Ephesus (cf. 1 Cor 16:15-17).
Although St Paul does not go into much detail, we can see that a number of groupings had grown up among the Corinthians They each claimed to follow a prominent Christian (clearly without any encouragement from their “heroes”), and a certain rivalry had developed which could easily undermine the unity of faith. The group who claimed Apollos—a Jewish convert from Alexandria (Egypt), a man of eloquence, well versed in the Scriptures (cf. Acts 18:24-28)—would have emerged after Apollos spent some time preaching in Corinth shortly after Paul left there (cf. Acts 19:1).
“I belong to Cephas”: the Peter group may have consisted of people who knew him to be the leader of the Apostles (cf. 3:21-23; 9:4-5; 15:5); St Peter may have passed through Corinth at some point, but there is no evidence of a visit and it is more likely that some of his disciples or converts had come to the city.
“I belong to Christ”: this can be interpreted as a reference either to a fourth group very attached to certain preachers from Jerusalem, of a Judaizing tendency—and therefore very attached to Jewish traditions and very disinclined to acknowledge the newness of Christ’s message; or else to some Christians who were disgusted at the petty quarrelling of the other groups and, therefore, would naturally claim to belong to Christ and only to Christ. It is possible, however, that this is a personal statement of St Paul’s, designed to show how foolish these groups are: You may say that you belong to Paul, to Apollos or to Peter: but I belong to Christ.
What the Apostle says here should lead us to avoid narrow-mindedness;each of us has his own job to do, where God put him, but he should also make his own the sentiments and concerns of the universal Church.
17. In the first part of this verse St Paul is giving the reasons for his actions as described in the preceding verses. The second part he
uses to broach a new subject—the huge difference between this world’s wisdom and the wisdom of God.
“Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the Gospel”: this is areminder that preaching is St Paul’s main task, as it is of the other
Apostles (cf. Mk 3:14). This does not imply a belittling of Baptism: in his mandate to the Apostles to go out into the whole world (cf. Mt 28:19-20), our Lord charged them to baptize as well as to preach, and we know that St Paul did administer Baptism. But Baptism—the sacrament of faith presupposes preaching: “faith comes from what is heard” (Rom 10:17). St Paul concentrates on preaching, leaving it to others to baptize and gather the fruit—a further sign of his detachment and upright intention.
In Christian catechesis, evangelization and the sacraments areinterdependent. Preaching can help people to receive the sacraments
with better dispositions, and it can make them more aware of what the sacraments are; and the graces which the sacraments bring help them to understand the preaching they hear and to be more docile to it. “Evangelization thus exercises its full capacity when it achieves the most intimate relationship, or better still a permanent and unbroken intercommunication, between the Word and the Sacraments. In a certain sense it is a mistake to make a contrast between evangelization and sacramentalization, as is sometimes done. It is indeed true that a certain way of administering the Sacraments, without the solid supportof catechesis regarding these same Sacraments and a global catechesis, could end up by depriving them of their effectiveness to a great extent. The role of evangelization is precisely to educate people in the faith so as to lead each individual Christian to live the Sacraments as true Sacraments of faith—and not to receive them passively or apathetically” (Paul VI, “Evangelii Nuntiandi”, 47).