ISAIAH 49:3-6
He said to me:
“You are my servant (Israel), in whom I will be glorified.”
For I said, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and in vain; yet surely my cause is with the Lord, and my reward with my God.”
And now the Lord says, he who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel might be gathered to him. And I am glorified in the eyes of the Lord, and my God has become my strength.
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
The Prophet Isaiah lived and preached from around 740 B.C. His disciples, his school, collected and wrote down his preachings. Much later, around 550 B.C., when the People were in exile in Babylon, another prophet, whose name we do not know, preached among the exiles, encouraging the people and exhorting them to maintain hope in Yahweh the Liberator.
These preachings were written down and added to those of Isaiah because the prophet was part of his school, and his spirit is understood as a continuation of the Great Prophet. These are chapters 40 – 55, called “Deutero-Isaiah” or “Second Isaiah”. They are also sometimes called the “Book of Consolation”.
In this book are included several songs put in the mouth of a character who has been called “The Servant of Yahweh”, which is presented as an announcement of The Messiah entirely different from the Davidic Messiah, triumphant and somewhat political, while “The Servant” seeks the conversion of the heart and will bear the sins of the people, suffering for them as “a man of sorrows” (50:4 and 53:2).
The Church has always seen in this character an announcement of Jesus and a prefiguration of his Passion.
1 CORINTHIANS 1:1-3
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes, the brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in any place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both their Lord and ours: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
This letter is one of the earliest writings of the New Testament.
It was probably written from Ephesus, around the year 55. Corinth was a real challenge for preaching: a cosmopolitan city, a great maritime commercial center where all cultures and all vices converged.
Paul visited Corinth around the year 50, and was received there by the couple Priscilla and Aquila, who had been expelled from Rome during the persecution of Claudius. No community received as much care from Paul as this one. He wrote them several letters (probably four), of which we only have two.
For seven Sundays we will read some of the most important fragments of the letter, in a continuous form, regardless of the message of the gospel. Today’s text presents the introduction of the letter, the initial greetings, and one of the first samples of Paul’s Christology: “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. God the Father <> The Lord Jesus Christ.
José Enrique Galarreta, S.J.