Isaiah points to the new city of God, the centre of redeemed humanity. The Fathers saw
the prophetic vision realized now in the Church, the seed and beginning of God's Kingdom

At the General Audience on Wednes­day, 4 September, in Rome in the Paul VI Audience Hall, in his 49th catechesis on the Psalms, the Holy Father com­mented on the Canticle of the second chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isa­iah (2,2-5) used at Lauds on Monday of the third week. The Pope noted that the reading from the Canticle of Isaiah is a prophetic vision of the last days, when all nations will stream towards the mountain of the Lord. Then in the last days the world will find peace in obey­ing God's law and listening to his word. The vision is a call to hope and trust in God's ongoing saving plan. Christians see this hope fulfilled in Je­sus Christ and the Church. In the mys­tery of the Church all humanity draws near to God and shares in the peace brought by Christ. At the same time, Christians are called to respond to God's gift by working for a world of reconciliation, justice and peace. Here is a translation of the Pope's catechesis given in Italian.

1. The daily liturgy of Lauds, in addi­tion to the Psalms, always offers a can­ticle from the Old Testament. Indeed, it is well known that besides the Psalter, the true prayer book of Israel and later of the Church, another sort of "Psalter" exists, found among the various histori­cal, prophetic and sapiential pages of the Bible. It also consists in hymns, sup­plications, praises and invocations, often of great beauty and spiritual intensity.

In our spiritual pilgrimage through the prayers of the Liturgy of Lauds, we have already seen many of these songs that are scattered through the pages of the Bible. We will now examine one that is really admirable, the work of Isa­iah, one of Israel's greatest prophets, who lived in eighth century before Christ. He was the witness of the diffi­cult times lived by the Kingdom of Ju­dah, but also sang of messianic hope in deeply poetic language.

Messianic prophecy: God's action is even now leading humanity to a happy goal

2. This is the case with the Canticle we have just heard, which is placed very near the beginning of the Book of Isaiah, in the first verses of chapter two. It is introduced by a later editorial note which says: "The Vision of Isaiah, the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem" (Is 2,1). The hymn is conceived as a prophetic vision describing a goal towards which the his­tory of Israel moves in hope. It is not by accident that the first words: "In the last days" (v. 2), that is, in the fullness of time. It is therefore an invitation not to be fixed on the present that is so wretched, but to sense beneath the sur­face of daily events the mysterious pres­ence of divine action leading history to­wards a very different horizon of light and peace.

This Messianic "vision" will be taken up again in chapter 60 of the same ­Book in a broader perspective, a sign of the rethinking of the prophet's essential and incisive words, those of the Canticle we have just heard. The Prophet Micah (cf. 4,1-3) will take up the same hymn, although his ending (cf. 4,4-5) differs from that of the oracle of Isaiah (cf. Is 2,5).

Miracle of light of the knowledge of God that draws the nations to Mt Zion

3. At the heart of Isaiah's "vision" ris­es Mount Zion, which speaking figura­tively will rise above all the other mountains, since it is God's dwelling place and so the place of contact with heav­en (cf. I Kgs 8,22-53). From here according to Isaiah's saying in 60, 1-6, a light will emanate that will rend and disperse the darkness and toward it will move processions of nations from every corner of the earth.

The power of attraction of Zion is based on two re­alities that emanate from the Holy Mountain of Jerusalem: the Law and the Word of the Lord. In truth, they constitute a sin­gle reality which is the source of life, light and peace, an expression of the mystery of the Lord and of ­his will. When the nations reach the summit of Zion where the temple of God rises, then the miracle will take place which humanity has always awaited and for which it longs. The peoples will drop their weapons which will then be collect­ed and made into tools for peaceful work: swords will be beaten into ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks. Thus will dawn a horizon of peace, of shalom in Hebrew (cf. Is 60,17), a word particu­larly cherished by Messian­ic theology. At last the cur­tain falls forever on war and hatred.

Christ and the Church are the mountain to which the Gentiles stream to find the peace of the Gospel

4. Isaiah's saying ends with an ap­peal, in harmony with the spirituality of the hymns of pilgrimage to Jerusalem: "O house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Is 2,5). Israel must not be a mere spectator of this radical historical transformation; she cannot disassociate herself from the invita­tion that rang out in the opening, on the peoples' lips: "Come, let us climb the mountain of the Lord" (v. 3).

We Christians are also challenged by this Canticle of Isaiah. In commenting on it, the Fathers of the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries (Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Theodoret of Cyr, Cyril of Alexandria) saw it fulfilled with the coming of Christ. Consequently they identified the Church with the "mountain of the house of the Lord ... established as the highest of the moun­tains", from which came the Word of the Lord and to which the pagan peo­ples streamed, in the new era of peace inaugurated by the Gospel.

Justin: early witness to tradition that the prophecy of Isaiah about the nations flocking to Zion now takes place in the Church

5. Already the martyr St Justin, in The First Apology, written about the year 153, announced that the verse of the Canticle which says: "the word of the Lord [would go forth] from Jerusalem" (cf. v. 3) had come to pass. He wrote "For twelve illiterate men, un­skilled in the art of speaking, went out from Jerusalem into the world, and by the power of God they announced to the men of every nation that they were sent by Christ to teach everyone the word of God; and we, who once killed one another, [now] not only do not wage war against our enemies, but, in order to avoid lying or deceiving our ex­aminers, we even meet death cheerfully, confessing Christ". (Prima Apologia, 39,3: Gli apologeti greci, Rome 1986, p. 118. The First Apology, chapter 39, pp. 75-76, CUA Press).

The Messianic prophecy calls us to build the civilization of love and peace

For this reason, in a special way let us Christians welcome the prophet's ap­peal and seek to lay the foundations of the civilization of love and peace in which there will be no more war, "and death will be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor pain any more for the former things have passed away" (Apoc 21,4).