Comfort My People (2nd Sunday of Advent)

Click here for this Sunday’s Readings

The context of today’s first reading from the Book of Isaiah has to do with the Babylonian Exile, which God wrought upon the people of Judah as punishment for their disobedience to the Law. Because this exile happened hundreds of years after the time of Isaiah, many scholars have posited that this was composed by a later figure known only as “Deutero-Isaiah,” who attributed his work to the prophet Isaiah as a way of gaining legitimacy for it. However, if we believe that predictive prophecy is true, such a hypothesis is unnecessary, since God is perfectly capable of speaking to the situation of a people hundreds of years before it happens.
In this passage, the people have languished under captivity for a long time, and God declares that they have more than recompensed for their sins. His plan for them is to root out all vestiges of idolatry from their consciousness once and for all, and the next several chapters go into detail refuting the worship of idols and asserting that there is only one true God. This seems to have had its intended effect, as the post-Exilic Jews seemed to have been largely free of the taint of idolatry.

Once the Jews have learned their lesson, God intends to bring them back to the promised Land. This return from exile is only a prelude to something greater, however, as it is intended to point forward to the ultimate salvation that God will provide from sin. God hints at this with the cryptic words found in verses 3-5, where a voice declares the coming of the Lord.

These words are later said to be fulfilled in John the Baptist, who is the one who declares the coming of the Lord in our Gospel reading (Mark 1:1-8). Thus, what was declared cryptically in the Old Testament is made plain in the New. The promise of salvation given in Isaiah finds its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus. As we go through the second week of Advent, we remember how God promised salvation in Christ hundreds of years in advance, and how the people of God waited expectantly for His arrival. We likewise look forward to when He returns, when all that remains to be fulfilled will finally come to pass.

J. Luis Dizon