Yesterday evening in many Orthodox churches during Vespers the first two readings from the Old Testament were from the prophet Isaiah. Let’s consider on this morning of the Ascension how those readings from the prophet Isaiah can guide us in our celebration of the Ascension into heaven of Our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ.

According to the Septuagint translation, Isaiah, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3 begins, “For in the last days the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be manifest and the house of God shall be on the tops of the mountains and shall be raised above the hills, and all the nations shall come to it. And many nations shall go and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will declare to us His way, and we shall walk in it. . .” A fifth century Bishop of Cyrrhus, Theodoret, a native of Antioch, has explained that “by ‘last days’ [Isaiah] means to say the days following the appearance of the Lord.”

So how do these words from the great prophet Isaiah prepare us for the Ascension of Christ? St Irenaeus, the outstanding second-century Orthodox Bishop of Lyons [now in France] wrote in Against Heresies that, and I quote, “God who was announced by the prophets is truly one and the same as God who is celebrated in the true gospel, whom we Christians worship and love with the whole heart as the maker of heaven and earth, and of all things within it” [3.10.5] [end of quote]. In other words, the God who is proclaimed in the Old Testament is the same God who is proclaimed in the New Testament. The promise that Isaiah sets out about the appearance of the Lord is a promise to each of us. Gathered in this church today we are “the house of God” that has been formed after the birth, life, death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ; and we are now being “raised” up. We are the place—the Church—to which people from “many nations shall go and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord.” And as these people from many nations begin to arrive here and in many other Orthodox churches, God Himself will, as Isaiah has phrased it, “declare to us His way.”

Reflecting on these words from the second chapter of Isaiah, the great fourth century preacher and leader, St John Chrysostom, who studied theology in Antioch, explained how we as Christians, and I quote, “form choirs, celebrate feasts, encourage each other mutually, and all become teachers, not a nation, not two nor three, but all assembled together. Numerous peoples come . . . and from different lands; now, this . . . never happened with the Jews,” preached St John Chrysostom; and he continued, “Certain [individuals] had come [to Judaism, but] they were a small number of proselytes [who came] with great difficulty, and never were these designated by the name of nations but as proselytes” [end of quote].

Proselytes are individuals who convert to a new faith. St John Chrysostom is reflecting on how we as Christians “encourage each other mutually, and all become teachers.” We each have a contribution to make to the Church, an opportunity to pray and serve in such a way that the Church itself is made stronger by our prayers and actions. Note that throughout our lives, it is God who “will declare to us His way,” but in the many years—the many seasons of our lives—we make decisions again and again about how “we shall walk” in His Way.

It is precisely because for two thousand years so many Christians have tried to walk in the Way of the Lord that the prophet Isaiah’s words ring true in chapter 62, verse 12—the second reading from Vespers last night. We are indeed “a holy people redeemed by the Lord.” So what does that mean for each of us—to be members of “a holy people redeemed by the Lord”? St Paul explained in Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 4 and 5, that God, and I quote, “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. He destined us in love,” wrote St Paul, “to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will” [end of quote]. Today, daughters are also chosen by God just as explicitly as sons to live “according to the purpose of His will.”

I find St Paul’s advice rather challenging. Did God really choose me to live with Him in Christ “according to the purpose of His will . . . holy and blameless,” before the foundation of the world? The fourth century monk and Biblical translator and exegete St Jerome has encouraged me. St Jerome wrote in his commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, and I quote: “It is asked how anyone can be saintly and unblemished in God’s sight. . . . We must reply [that] Paul does not say that He chose us before the foundation of the world on account of our being saintly and unblemished. [Rather,] He chose us that we might become saintly and unblemished that is, that we who were not formerly saintly and unblemished should subsequently be so. . .”

None of us can fit into our lives everything that we ourselves hope to do each day. My own experience is that even when I achieve 70% or 80% of what I hope to do in a single day, that evening and the next morning what I remember is the 20% or 30% I did not achieve. Now, the real question that confronts each of us every day is: Did I achieve in my thoughts and prayers and actions what the Lord intended for me to achieve? St Augustine of Hippo has reflected that, and I quote: “Although God is ‘our Helper’ [Psalm 18(19):2], we cannot be helped if we don’t make some effort of our own. God doesn’t work out our salvation in us as if we are dull stones or creatures without reason or will. You know what you want [in your prayers and life],” wrote St Augustine in his Sermon 30, but [God] knows what is good for you.” In other words, we all need the Lord’s help. We shouldn’t rely only on ourselves to decide either our goals or our hopes.

I close with the challenging theme of St Augustine in The City of God. We each face a choice every day of our lives whether to live among “ungodly people guided and formed by the love of self,” or “godly people guided and formed by the love of God.” Let us join Isaiah and St Paul and so many of the early Church Fathers and seek to be “guided and formed by the love of God.”