1. A great prophet that lives among the exiled people of Babylon announces the ending of the exile. It will be a new exodus, it will arrive like the Spring: But do not dwell on the past, or remember the things of old. Look, I am doing a new thing: now it springs forth. Do you not see? (Is 43,18-19). This good news appears in second Isaiah's part (40-55), in the Book of Consolation, the one that was attributed to Isaiah the second. In order to understand his message implicates identifying a situation (exile), several addressees (Jerusalem, the exiles), a voice that clamours (the prophet that is at the service of God's word).
2. The Book of Consolation can be placed in the middle of the VI century B.C. between years 553, that Persian king Cyrus (Is 45,1-8; 41,1-5; 48,12-15) begins his campaigns, and 539, that Babylonia surrenders. These years are characterized for the decadence of the Babylonian empire and the appearing of a new empire, the Persian. Both related facts bring about the exile prophet's attention. Cyrus has an open mind and is tolerant: Will the ending of exile be near? Will there be a new exodus?
3. Difficulties are enormous. God's word is confronted to Babylonia, arrogance itself, powerful and criminal, the one that says: “I and nobody else” (Is 47,7-8). God's word is confronted also to the imperial gods, who are a temptation for Israel itself: Some pour out gold from their purses, and with silver weighed on the scales they hire a goldsmith to make an image before which they bow and worship (46,6). Everywhere there are temples, statues, and grand liturgies, witnessed for enormous crowds. The bigger difficulty is the crisis of the people who believe: My destiny is hidden from the Lord, my God ignores my cause (40,27), the Lord has forsaken me, my owner has forgotten me (49,14). Only a few have the door opened to the hope.
4. In this context, a voice is raised: Be comforted, my people, be strengthened says your God. Speak to the heart of Jerusalem, proclaim to her that her time of bondage is at the end, that her guilt has been paid for, that from the hand of Yahweh she has received double punishment for all her iniquity (40,1-2). The time of exile is not a lost time. Faith is awakening in difficult moments. Historic books were written, from Joshua to the Kings. The text of the Priest is written, that narrates the works of God from creation to Moss’s death. The old books as well as the new ones are in the centre of the community meetings. Well then, the fall of Babylon approaches, the end of exile. As in days gone a road was opened at sea, now a road is opened at the desert, that separates the exiles in Babylon from their own land of Jerusalem: In the wilderness prepare the way for Yahweh. Make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley will be raised up; every mountain and hill will be laid low. The stumbling blocks shall become level and the rugged places smooth. The glory of Yahweh will be revealed, and all mortals together will see it; for the mouth of Yahweh has spoken (40,3-5).
5. But who is speaking in the name of God? An expatriated prophet, that embodies servant's figure, servant or the Lord's collaborator. In his first song (Is 42) God himself introduces him and supports him: Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight. The servant has the gift of the spirit and a mission to accomplish. I have put my spirit upon him, and he will bring justice to the nations. He does not shout or raise his voice; proclamations are not heard in the streets. A broken reed he will not crush, nor will he snuff out the light of the wavering wick. He will not waver or be broken until he has established justice on earth; the islands are waiting for his law. The servant's mission has no frontiers. He has to establish the law and God's commands to communicate his will, to do justice. He will not impose himself by force, neither will he enslave nor will he remain silent or lose his heart. The servant, collaborator of God and fruit of his hands, obeys a destiny received from God: I, Yahweh, have called you for the sake of justice; I will hold your hand to make you firm; I will make you as a covenant for people, and as light to the nations, to open eyes that do not see, to free captives from prison, to bring out to light those who sit in darkness.
6. In the second song (Is 49), the mission of the servant, which apparently is a failure, reaches the whole world: Listen to me, oh islands, pay attention, peoples from distant lands. Yahweh called me from my mother's womb; he pronounces my name before I was born. He made my mouth like a sharpened sword. He hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me into a polished arrow set apart in his quiver. He said to me:” you are Israel, my servant, through you I will be known”.” I have laboured in vain,” I thought and spent my strength for nothing". The Lord's call extends to the roots of our existence. The mouth of the servant which proclaims the Word is a sharp sword and a well-pointed arrow, a weapon for close and far away, a weapon utilized by the Lord in the appropriate moment. For a time, the sword is hidden in the shadow of his hand and the arrow kept in his quiver. But it is neither lost time nor useless work. The servant's failure is only apparent. It is not only a question of joining together Jacob's tribes. His mission extends to the end of the earth: I will make you the light of the nations, that my salvation will reach to the ends of the earth. God arranges for a universal, visible event at the scene of history for all the nations.
7. In the third song (Is 50) the servant appears with the mission to listen and to announce an encouraging word, in spite of the blows that he may receive: The Lord Yahweh has taught me so I speak as his disciple and I know how to sustain the weary. Morning after morning he wakes me up to hear, to listen a disciple. The servant has a disciple's tongue. With the word that he receives from the Lord he supports the tired people. Each morning he is attentive to The Lord, which arouses his hearing. Exiled and full of vexations, whipped, spat upon and slapped, he knows how to obey The Lord, he knows how to hold on: I have not rebelled, nor have I withdrawn. I offered my back to those who strike me, my cheeks to those who pulled my beard; neither did shield my face from blows, spittle and disgrace. The servant maintains his confidence in The Lord; he knows that he will end up succeeding against his persecutors. For that reason he puts his face like the flint.
8. In the fourth song (Is 53) of the servant one talked in third person. He has been seized, slain, like the lamb that was taken to the slaughterhouse: Like a root out of dry ground, like a sapling he grew up before us, with nothing attractive in his appearance, no beauty, no majesty. He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows familiar with grief, a man from whom people hide their face. The servant takes the human sin upon himself, that becomes evident in his own suffering: Yet ours were the sorrows he bore, ours were the sufferings he endured, although we considered him as one punished by God, stricken and brought low. Destroyed because our sins, he was crushed for our wickedness. Through his punishment we are made whole; his wounds heal us. Like sheep we had all gone astray, each following his own way; but Yahweh laid upon him our guilt...Like lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearer he did not open his mouth. He was taken away to detention and judgment-what an unthinkable fate! However, the same God, that made fertile Sara's womb, will give descendants to His servant: he will have a long life and see his descendants ... My just servant will justify the multitude. The servant, abandoned in God's hands, gets what the holocausts and sacrifices did not get.
9. But whom are we dealing with? That is what the eunuch asks when he encounters Philip. Philip belongs to the Greek sector of the community of Jerusalem. The Greek sector, like the Gospel, has done a sweeping of laws and it is on that sector that the persecution specially relapses: Those who were scattered went about preaching the Good News of the Word (Acts 8,4). So, in this context, a messenger, an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying: Go south towards the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza the desert road (8,26). He got up and went. The eunuch, an Ethiopian, senior post, Minister of the Treasure, a pious man, was on his way home after worshipping in Jerusalem, seated in his carriage, reading the Bible. The Spirit (without any mediation) tells Philip: Go and catch up with that carriage (8,29). Philip ran to him and heard the man reading the prophet Isaiah. He said to him: Do you understand what you are reading? He answered: How can I unless someone explains it to me? And he begged Philip to get in and sit beside him. The passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this: He was led like a sheep to be slaughtered... (Is 53; 7). The eunuch asked Philip: Tell me please, does the prophet speak from himself or of someone else? (Acts 8,34). Then Philip began to tell him the Good News of Jesus, using this text of the Scripture as his starting point. All that happened that day has a sense, nothing happened by chance. The key of everything is Jesus, the Lord, crucified precisely in that place from where the eunuch of pilgrimage returns.
10. Jerusalem is asleep, lethargic, has drunk anger's goblet and vertigo's chalice, she is captive: Awake, awake! Arise, Jerusalem! You who have drunk at the hand of Yahweh the cup of his fury, the cup which made you tremble, that you drank to the last drop! (Is 51,17) Awake, awake! Gather strength, O Zion! Put on your glorious garments, Jerusalem, holy city! For never will the uncircumcised or the unclean enter you again. Shake the dust off yourself and rise up, O Jerusalem. Loosen the bonds from your neck, O captive daughter of Zion. For thus says Yahweh: You were sold for no amount, you will be redeemed without money (Is 52,1-3).
11. The messenger announces the good news, God's action, the salvation, and the liberation: How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion: your God reigns right now! The Lord opens a road amidst exile. Therefore, it is precise to come out of Babylon: Depart, depart from that nation! Touch nothing unclean. Depart from there; purify yourselves, you who bear all Yahweh's holy vessels. Yet do not hurry, do not scatter in fright, because The Lord Yahweh is leading the way. (52,11-12).
12. The holy city is ruined and without inhabitants, but the Lord announces its reconstruction: O afflicted city, lashed by storm, unconsoled, I will set your stones with turquoise, your foundations with sapphires. I will crown your wall with agate; make your gates crystal, and your ramparts of precious stones (54,11-12). The Lord answers to his complaints and lamentations: Can a woman forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child of her womb? Yet though she forgets, I will never forget you. See, I have written your name upon the palm of my hands; your walls are ever before me (49,15-16).
13. Jerusalem is the city, but also the wife. Yesterday deserted, abandoned and sterile, she listens to a wonderful promise now. She is going to have to make room for the children that are from all over the world. Her husband is now with her forever: Rejoice, O barren woman who has not given birth; sing and shout for joy, you who never had children, for more are the children of the rejected woman than the children of the married wife, says Yahweh. Enlarge the space for your tent (Is 54,1-2).
14. Jesus’ mission opens up under the sign of Second Isaiah. Even the word gospel, good news (Mk 1,1) comes principally from the prophet who announces the end of exile. John the Baptist, the predecessor, introduces himself with these words: A voice is shouting in the desert: prepare a way for the Lord; make his paths straight (Mt 3,3). The old man Simeon, who expects the consolation of Israel (Lk 2,25), right now can die in peace. The servant's figure comes true completely in the baptism (Mk 1,11), in the transfiguration (9,7), in the death and in Jesus’ resurrection. The birth of the Church is contemplated like this: I will raise fallen David's tent (Acts 15,16).
15. Forty years ago, when the call for a council matured in John XXIII, it was not like fruit of a prolonged reflection, but like the flower of an unexpected spring. Little by little afterwards we have gone, for successive approximations, recovering the communal experience of the Acts of the Apostles and therefore the simplest and purest features of the nascent Church have been appearing. In spite of the difficulties and resistances, which have been many, renewal is not a vain word but something that already is sprouting, that already is on the way, that we already are living with. Without this renewal – still pending to a great scale – the Church appears like nothing to the eyes of many (Ag 2,3), without the fertility of the mustard grain (Mt 13,32), aged, lifeless, hopeless. Like that old elm tree of worm-eaten and dusty trunk that the poet A. Machado sang: “It will not be like the singing poplars, that the road and the bank keep, inhabited of brown nightingales".
16. The word of God that in its moment determines Jeremiah’s vocation continues to be present. The prophet contemplates like a symbol and sign a branch of almond tree, the first tree that blooms and thus announces the spring: A word of Yahweh came to me again," Jeremiah what do you see? I said, "I see the branch of a watching tree" And Yahweh said to me, " You are right, I too am watching to fulfil my word"(Jr 1,11-12). The word of God brings the spring. That's why, me too " I want to note down in my wallet /the wit of the bloomed branch. / My heart also hopes, /toward light and toward life, /another miracle of the spring".
* For the personal and group reflection:
- we are in Babylon, in exile.
- we have already left.
- we are in Jerusalem, we raised the tent.
- we take part in the servant's mission.
- we broaden the space of the tent.
- we give thanks for the branch in bloom.