Our Venerable Father Benedict of Nursia (547).
Great Fast Day 32. According to liturgical prescriptions, the Divine Liturgy is not celebrated today.
Sixth Hour – Isaiah 42:5-16. Vespers – Genesis 18:20-33. Proverbs 16:17-17:17.
Read Isaiah 42:5-16
Glory to Jesus Christ! Glory forever!
Today the prophet Isaiah exhorts us, “Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the earth!” (Isa.42:10). As we approach the end of the Great Fast, our attention turns to the solemn days we will soon be celebrating – the voluntary passion, death and resurrection of our Lord, the commemoration of our salvation.
The early Church writer, Origen, compares this new song, which the prophet exhorts us to sing, to the song of Miriam, which the Israelites sang after the crossing of the Red Sea and their deliverance from the bondage of Egypt: “Let us sing to the Lord, for gloriously has He been glorified” (Exodus 15:21). As St. Paul reminds us, the crossing of the Red Sea was a type and foreshadowing of our baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ (cf 1 Cor. 10:1-4). This typology is taken up into our liturgy, as the Church takes up the song of Miriam at the Paschal Vigil where the catechumens are to be baptized.
St. Ephrem the Syrian, acknowledges this typology as well and comments on the greater joy the Church should sing with, having been delivered from greater bondage: “[Isaiah] speaks again about the Gentiles and invites them to sing a new song to the Lord. Indeed, if the Jews, redeemed from captivity after seventy years, had to sing a new hymn to the Lord, their liberator, why should not the Gentiles do the same? And should they not burst out into a new song with much more good reason, since they have been delivered from a bondage of many centuries?” (St. Ephrem the Syrian, Commentary on Isaiah)
Today’s reading points us toward our common hope that will be celebrated and realized anew at Pascha. During these last weeks of Great Lent, let us keep our eyes fixed on that hope as we prepare to sing our new song, the Church’s paschal hymn: Christ is risen from the dead…