A Banquet on God's Holy Mountain

For a third day Isaiah takes us to the mountain of the Lord. On Monday Isaiah described the mountain as a place of peace, promising the end to warfare. Yesterday we learned that the mountain of the Lord would be a place free of natural disasters and natural enmities. Today's description of the mountain tells us that it will also be a place free of hunger; all people on God's holy mountain will be well fed with rich, juicy food. It becomes increasingly clear that these oracles point to a Messiah who will restore the world to God's original design.

God’s Holy Mountain is an image of the Parousia or, in modern parlance, an image of heaven.  One of the Eucharistic Prayers for Masses with Children points to heaven as a place where there will be no more sadness, no more tears, no more pain.  However, it is important to realize that before the children of Israel ever got to any of the mountains that are mentioned in the Scriptures, they had to travel through a desert.  Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, even the Mount of the Transfiguration, are all surrounded by desert making it necessary for anyone who wanted to approach God on top of the mountain to go through the desert, to experience the heat of the day and the cold of the night.

Most of the people of Israel experienced a subsistence kind of existence, a desert of hunger and thirst. They spent little time concerned about what happened yesterday and even less time being concerned about the future. Their primary concern was today. Whence would their next meal come? Would they go to bed that evening hungry or with full bellies? They spent no time wondering which clothing they would wear that day as they only had one cloak, one tunic. Unfortunately, many people in what we refer to as the third world still live the same kind of subsistence existence.  So while God’s Holy Mountain is a figure representing heaven, the desert can be called a figure representing our human experience.  Even those of us who live in relative comfort, who have plenty of food, experience the desert during our lives. 

So the Messianic promises of God’s Holy Mountain can be seen as prize or reward that is won by those who survive the desert.  Notice that the banquet that is served on God’s Holy Mountain is of choice wines and rich, juicy food.  Again the people of that time would not have known such meals.  Their diet consisted of bread and dried or salted meat that had been preserved by the drying effects of the desert heat.  So the banquet that God serves the faithful people represents that which we have not known during this life. 

One aspect of our Advent prayer today focuses our attention on the poor and the starving peoples of our world. Jesus fed the multitude in the Gospels to fulfill the Messianic promise of Isaiah. It is now our task to do the same.

However, there is another aspect to our prayer today; namely to preserve our faith and to nourish our hope so that one day we too may experience the benefits of God’s Holy Mountain.

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator