Isaías 57
Augustine of Hippo · Comentário Patrístico (catena)
Isaías 57:8
Rightly does God through the prophet reproach the sinful soul that goes whoring away from him and say, "You thought, if you withdrew from me, you would have more?" But like that younger son, why, you have ended up feeding pigs; why, you have lost all things; why, you have remained in want and left it very late before you grew tired and came back. Now at last realize that what the Father gave you, he could keep for you more safely.… O sinful soul, filled with harlotries, turned foul and faded, turned unclean, and still loved like that! So go back to the beautiful one, in order to return to beauty; go back and speak to him who alone suffices you.… So lift your heart up, do not leave it on the ground, or in those beggarly treasures or in a place to rot. In Adam, too, the root of all evils was avarice. You see, he wanted more than he had received, because God had not been enough for him. — SERMON 177:9
Isaías 57:13
This, as I have said, is obscure: "shall possess the land and inhabit my holy mountain." After all, if we take it literally and materialistically, we won't be cleansing ourselves from every defilement of flesh and spirit; and God will have procured for us to no purpose the conjunction of the end of the reading from the prophet with the beginning of the reading from the apostle, if to possess some earthly mountain we start getting ourselves ready for avarice, not for godliness. Well, but what should we understand by the mountain? It is obscure what [Isaiah] meant by "mountain."Yes, but if God had really let us down, he would nowhere say what mountain means. Where he does tell us openly, that is where you must love the mountain. Where he openly recommends a mountain to you, and Scripture opens itself up to say what mountain means, that is where you must love it. Yes, wherever you hear such a mountain promised you, set your sights on it.… What sort of mountain really has been promised us?… The church itself is the mountain … we are going to rise again, and we shall be the holy mountain of God. On this mountain dwells whoever has given himself to God. "But those who have given themselves to me shall possess the land and inhabit my holy mountain." — SERMON 45:3-5
Isaías 57:19
Through love of this true life you ought, then, to consider yourself desolate in this world, no matter what happiness you enjoy. For, just as that is the true life in comparison with which this other, which is so much loved, is not to be called life, however pleasant and prolonged it may be, so that is their true comfort that God promised by the prophet saying, "I will give them true comfort, peace on peace." Without this comfort there is no more grief than consolation to be found in earthly comforts, whatever they may be.… Not by such goods do we become good, but having become good otherwise, they make these things good by their good use of them. Therefore, there is no true comfort in these things; rather, it is found where true life is. A person's happiness necessarily must come from the same source as his goodness. — LETTER 130
Isaías 57:21
For that joy that is after the fashion of the world is not true joy. Hear the prophet Isaiah: "There is no joy, says my God, to the wicked." What the wicked call joy is not joy, such as he [David] knew, who made no account of their joy; let us believe him, brothers. He was a man, but he knew both kinds of joy. He certainly knew the joys of the cup, for he was a man; he knew the joy of the table, he knew the joys of marriage, he knew those joys worldly and luxurious.… But you say, I don't see that light which Isaiah saw. Believe and you shall see it. For perhaps you do not have the eye to see it. For it is a certain type of eye by which that beauty is discerned. For just as there is an eye of the flesh by which this light is seen, so there is an eye of the heart by which that joy is perceived. Perhaps your eye is wounded, dimmed, disturbed by passion, by greed, by indulgence, by senseless lust. Your eye is disturbed. You cannot see that light. Believe before you see. You shall be healed, and then you will see. — EXPLANATIONS OF THE PSALMS 97:16