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And it came to pass in the year in which king Ozias died, that I saw the Lord sitting on a high and exalted throne, and the house was full of his glory. 2 And seraphs stood round about him: each one had six wings: and with two they covered their face, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 And one cried to the other, and they said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. 4 And the lintel shook at the voice they uttered, and the house was filled with smoke. 5 And I said, Woe is me, for I am pricked to the heart; for being a man, and having unclean lips, I dwell in the midst of a people having unclean lips; and I have seen with mine eyes the King, the Lord of hosts. 6 And there was sent to me one of the seraphs, and he had in his hand a coal, which he had taken off the altar with the tongs: 7 and he touched my mouth, and said, Behold, this has touched thy lips, and will take away thine iniquities, and will purge off thy sins. 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go to this people? And I said, behold, I am here, send me. And he said, Go, and say to this people, 9 Ye shall hear indeed, but ye shall not understand; and ye shall see indeed, but ye shall not perceive. 10 For the heart of this people has become gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes have they closed; lest they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them. 11 And I said, How long, O Lord? And he said, Until cities be deserted by reason of their not being inhabited, and the houses by reason of there being no men, and the land shall be left desolate. 12 And after this God shall remove the men far off, and they that are left upon the land shall be multiplied.
This vision of Esaias is among the best known passages of the Old Testament, and the Holy Fathers have commented copiously upon it. The Holy Spirit is teaching us many lessons here, but let us hearken at least to these four:
The true God is the Holy Trinity.
We men are graciously granted the privilege to worship this Holy Trinity as do the angels in heaven.
We derogate from this high calling by misusing the gift of speech, and
That which the angels feared to touch – the burning coal of the divine presence – we touch and receive into ourselves, in Holy Communion.
You have probably read this passage before, perhaps many times. Have you ever wondered why the acclamation of the seraphim in the form of a multiple predicate adjective is triple but the subject and the verb of this periodic sentence are in the singular (“Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord [not “are the lords”] of Sabaoth”)? St. Ambrose certainly did notice this, and here is what he says:
What is the meaning of the threefold utterance of the word Holy? If it is repeated three times, why is it one act of praise? Is not Holy repeated three times because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in holiness? The seraphim spoke the name, not once, lest the Son be excluded, not twice, lest the Spirit should be overlooked, not four times lest something created be included. Furthermore, to show that the Trinity is one God, after the threefold Holy is spoken, they add the singular, the Lord God of hosts (6:3). Therefore the Father is holy, the Son is holy, and also the Spirit of God is holy; the Trinity is adored, but does not adore, it is praised, but it does not praise. As for me, I believe as the seraphim believed, and adore God as did all the principalities and powers. – St. Ambrose of Milan, On Faith 2.107
Thus every time we recite or chant the Trisagion Hymn in our prayers at home or at the Liturgy of the Catechumens, and every time we chant the Sanctus of the Anaphora at the Liturgy of the Faithful, we are thereby professing to believe in the Holy Trinity as also the angels in heaven believe, and we are granted an angelic status by being allowed to worship the Holy Trinity in the same way that the angels also worship.
Realizing the greatness of this privilege, both to believe in the True God as He wishes to be believed in, and to worship Him as He desires to be worshipped, should we not at the same time be struck, as Esaias was, with our woeful unfitness for receiving so great a gift? Do we not also have unclean lips, and do we not also live among a people of unclean lips? Here is what St. Gregory the Dialogist says about it:
Purity of heart and simplicity are most precious in the sight of Almighty God, who is fully pure and simple in nature. Set apart from the ways of the world, the servants of God are strangers to its vain talk and thus avoid disturbing and soiling their minds in idle conversation. …We are drawn downwards by mingling in continual conversation with people of the world. It is with good reason that Isaiah, after seeing the Lord, the King of hosts, accuses himself of this very fault. In a spirit of repentance he says, “Woe is me, because…I am a man of unclean lips.” And why are his lips unclean? Because, as he explains immediately, “I dwell in the midst of a people that has unclean lips.” Grieving that his own lips are unclean, he shows us that he contracted this defilement by living among a people that had unclean lips.
To take part in the talk of worldly people without defiling our own heart is all but impossible. If we permit ourselves to discuss their affairs with them, we grow accustomed to a manner of speech unbecoming to us, and end up clinging to it with pleasure and are no longer entirely willing to leave it. We enter upon the conversation reluctantly, as a kind of condescension, but we find ourselves carried along from idle words to harmful ones, from trivial faults to serious guilt, with the result that our lips are more defiled with foolish words, and our prayers further and further removed from God’s hearing…Why should we be surprised, then, if God is so slow to hear our petitions when we on our part are slow to hear God’s command or pay no attention whatever to it? – Dialogues, 3.15.
How, then, can we participate in society without being tempted constantly to sins of the tongue? In short, we cannot. Therefore, we must arm ourselves daily against the temptation, resolving each morning, before the duties of the day begin, to take preventive countermeasures. These should include anticipating the kinds of conversations we may have later in the day just begun, which ones will truly be required and which ones will not, and avoid those that are avoidable, especially if we know from experience that they will likely lead to sin. Another measure to take is constant recourse to the Jesus Prayer throughout the day. Along with the Jesus Prayer, we can also frequently repeat the words of the psalm: “Set, O Lord, a watch before my mouth and a door of enclosure round about my lips.” Another saving practice is to remind ourselves daily that we have the duties of justice and charity towards everyone we meet, for God providentially sends into our path precisely those whom He intends, for our salvation and for theirs. Before I open my mouth, I should pray, “O Lord, may I edify – and not tempt – my neighbor this day both by what I say and by what I refrain from saying.”
These same human lips that praise God with the angelic song also open to receive God Himself in Holy Communion. Such a consoling yet fearful thought, kept in mind at all times, should certainly move us to keep our lips pure. The fiery seraph, that lofty and pure intelligence, could not touch the burning coal that cleansed the lips of the prophet, needing instead to hold it with tongs. Yet the Christian priest, a mere sinful man, holds the Body of God Himself in his hands, and the lowly Christian takes into his entire being, in all of its infinite and essentially unbearable reality, that which the great prophet could merely touch with his lips, and that only in type and figure, in the form of the burning coal.
The seraph could not touch the coal of fire with his
Fingers, and the coal merely touched Isaiah’s mouth;
The seraph did not hold it, Isaiah did not consume it,
But our Lord has allowed us to do both.
– St. Ephraim the Syrian, Hymn on Faith 10.10
