Fr Matthew Reese
Dear Friends in Christ,
In a couple of hours, at Morning Prayer, a few of us will be sitting in the beautiful quietude of the Chapel of Saint Benedict. Four days a week we keep this Office, and one of things I love about it is its spare, simple, contemplative character. But as we get to the first reading (Isaiah 9:1-7), I’ll certainly have a whole orchestra playing in my mind’s ear.
Isaiah 9 is a famously musical passage, and you will no doubt recognize some of its verses, “The people that dwelleth in darkness” and “For unto us a child is born” from Handel’s Messiah. On Sunday we heard another Messiah excerpt, also on a text from Isaiah, “And the Glory of the Lord” (Isaiah 40:5-8).
The text of Handel’s oratorio, compiled by Charles Jennens, is what we call a cento, a poem or libretto taken entirely from other texts, in this case the King James Bible and Coverdale translation of the Psalms. Sixteen of its movements derive from Isaiah. Why so many?
The Book of Isaiah is replete with poems and canticles, and its beautiful, evocative language has always lent it to musical settings. Isaiah is also a Prophetic work, and is quoted and alluded to throughout the Gospels, particularly in Matthew and Luke.
It was clear to the authors of the Gospels that this child who was born, that this son who was given, was none other than Jesus Christ—whose “name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”
Not only does Isaiah give us a whole series of explicit Messianic prophecies in which we see the person of Jesus foreshadowed, it also gives us all sorts of other thematic and historical commonalities:
The Book of Isaiah is probably three interrelated texts, concerning the prophet himself (8th century BC), the trauma of exile during the “Babylonian Captivity” (6th century BC), and the period after Israel’s return. What we have in this extraordinary work is a story of God’s judgement and consolation, of the restoration of a people broken by sin, across a great arc of time. Isaiah reminds us that the workings of God extend beyond the human experience of time, that first and the last are inextricably linked. Indeed, the Incarnation, the Crucifixion and Resurrection, are all bound in God’s plan for Creation.
What better material could Jennens and Handel have asked for? So, in the quiet of chapel this morning, I will have this music ringing in my ears… a herald of the coming Prince of Peace.
—Fr Matthew