Sunday 16 July, Dom Prior Gregory

The prophets of the Old Testament remain important mentors to us to this day. They educate us in submission to God and teach us his ways. They don’t merely hold out ideals to us, but speak to us from their position as friends of God. Their ministry is coloured, enlivened, by the knowledge of God revealed to them for the benefit of all of us. These thoughts can help us approach the central part of today’s Gospel, the quotation Our Lord offers us from the prophet Isaiah. It follows on immediately from his vision of the Lord of Hosts and his glory. When we meditate on that vision, as the Sanctus encourages us to do at every Mass, holy holy holy, we are reminded that our destiny, God’s will for us, is that we should all attain to the vision of God in eternity. It was Isaiah’s great sorrow that the majority of his contemporaries did not share his love of God and his thirst for justice. Just as Moses was not jealous when the elders, Eldad and Medad received the Holy Spirit, so no true prophet can be jealous. God is generous with his gifts, as Moses recognised: I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the LORD would place His Spirit on them! All are called to the vision of God, indeed all receive the inspirations of the Holy Spirit. The first rays of the glory of God are seen in the beauty of creation. The blindness and deafness of which Isaiah speaks give way before the grace of repentance. Thirst for prayer and delight in the Scriptures bring growth in the love of God.
In the second reading St Paul speaks of the glory that is to be revealed to us. At the moment of his conversion he had glimpsed something of the glory of the Risen Lord, an experience he had spent three years absorbing. Christ made him free: he had entered into the glorious freedom of the children of God. He goes on to teach us that we have the first fruits of the Spirit. We are children of God, the new creation. The seed of the Word of God which is in our souls and hearts and bodies is the seed of eternal glory. The Father is continually revealing himself, the Holy Spirit assists, the Son ministers so that all may come to faith and be perfected by the vision of God’s glory.
The world in which we live provides more than enough evidence of the evil one stealing the Word from hearts that have barely heard it. The rocky ground of scorn and persecution is all around us. The suffocation of spirituality by sensuality is Satan’s great triumph in the affluent sections of every society. These are the proofs that Isaiah is speaking to us today, yet he was one of those righteous men who yearned to see what we see and to hear what we hear. The saving word echoes in our ears continually. The Work of Salvation unfolds before our eyes. Holy holy, holy is the Lord God of Hosts; heaven and earth are full of his glory: I shall be filled when thy glory is revealed.