Commentaria in Isaiam
Secondly, this “double” can be taken not of punishments but of graces, as if to say: God so forgave the Church her iniquities, and so now consoles her through Christ, that she has received “double,” that is, manifold goods, gifts, graces and consolations from the immense mercy of God for her sins, and the punishments of sins which she deserved. So Adam. For ample consolation is here given the Church through Christ. The former sense is simpler; the latter is here more sublime and more divine. For this is a vengeance worthy of and proper to God, to render goods for evils, and those double; for his goodness is so generous that it contends with the malice of men, and overwhelms it.
Morally, learn here how divine it is to console the afflicted, even enemies and foes. So the patriarch Joseph consoled his brothers, grieved for that grave sin by which they had wished to kill him, Genesis 50. Elcana, father of Samuel, consoled the sorrowful mother, because her rival reproached her with barrenness, 1 Kings 1. Tobias the elder consoles his wife, sad on account of the longer delay of their absent son, Tobias 10:6. Christ the Lord consoles Martha and Mary Magdalene, sad for the death of their brother Lazarus, John 11:23. St. Antony consoled Didymus the blind, saying: “There is no reason, Didymus, to consume thyself with grief because thou lackest eyes, which mice, lizards and vile little animals have. Thou shouldst rather be lifted up with pleasure and joy, who like the Angels hast the sight of the inner eyes, with which thou perceivest an immortal and divine thought, and seest truth itself exactly.” So Nicephorus, book 9, chapter 18.
St. Gregory, book 2, letter 44, consoled Judith, driven from the kingdom of Hungary: “Moreover,” he says, “the adversity which now presses on thee, let it not terrify thee, nor depress the spirit of thy nobility: but if anything sad or grievous come upon thee, dissemble it by the look and bearing of royal constancy, and bear patiently, by the natural virtue of thy character, the causes of troubles (which God avert), having firm confidence and hope in God our Savior, since he has care of thee, who never forsakes those who hope in him: and the more bitterly he now lets thy mind be beaten with anxieties, the more abundantly will he gladden it from the near and mighty power of his consolation.
Act, then, so as to show thyself as much more excellent than all that kingdom and empire bring, as thou knowest all these things to be changeable. And may almighty God, who is the consolation of the sad, the strength of the weak, soon confer upon you present gladness, and give true and eternal glory of supernal felicity.”
St. Bernard, letter 110, thus consoles the sorrowing parents of Geoffrey on their son’s entering Clairvaux: “As many as we are in Clairvaux, or from Clairvaux, we receive him as brother, you as parents. But perhaps you fear for his body the harshness of life, because you know it to be tender and delicate. Yet of such a fear it is said: There they trembled for fear where there was no fear. Be confident, be comforted; I will be to him a father, and he will be to me a son, until the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation receive him from my hands. Do not mourn, then, do not weep, because your Geoffrey hastens to joy, not to mourning. I will be to him a father, I also a mother, I brother and sister. I will make for him the crooked straight, and the rough plain. I will so temper and dispense all things for him that the spirit may advance, and the body not fail. Finally he shall serve the Lord in gladness and exultation, and shall sing in the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord.”
3. THE VOICE OF ONE CRYING, supply, will be, or will be heard, in the desert. Now St. Thomas, Hugh, Toletus and Jansenius proceed to refer this literally to the return from the Babylonian captivity, as if to say: I seem to myself to hear the herald of Cyrus: Cyrus makes you free, O Hebrews! return to your country cheerfully: and you, O nations, through whom they are to pass, level the ways for them, and fill the hills and valleys, that is, give them an easy and convenient passage. It is a catachresis. Similar in this same matter is Baruch 5:7. Others, however, refer this to the loosed captivity of the human race from the power of the devil through Christ, of which that was a type.
But I say that this is to be understood of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, and preparing the way for him in the desert; I confess, however, that there is an allusion to the return from Babylon. That this is so St. John himself teaches, who, being asked: “Who art thou?” answered: “I am the voice of one crying in the desert,” and so on, “as said the prophet Isaias.” For to him properly belongs that address: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” and so on. Finally, so all the Evangelists narrate of St. John and explain this passage, and the Church so, as is plain from Matthew 3:3; Mark 1:3; Luke 3:4 and others, and this will be more plain from the following chapter, where he clearly treats of Christ and the calling of the Gentiles. Hence St. John is called by Tertullian, book 4 Against Marcion, chapter 11, “a crier in the solitude, and the preparer of the Lord’s ways, by announcing and praising penance.”
Note first: This “voice of one crying” or calling belongs to that command of verse 1: “Comfort, and call to her.” For it is its execution, or rather the token, as if to say: If thou askest: Whence knowest thou, O Isaias, that this consolation will come to the Church and to us, that God reconciled to us will remit sins and give double? I answer, he says, I know it from this that I see and hear the voice of John the Baptist calling her, and crying that she prepare herself for this consolation, remission and grace which Christ coming brings to her, who will reconcile the world to God, and appease God by his obedience and death.
Note second: John was the voice of one crying, namely of God, and of the divine Word: for God cried through the mouth and voice of John, as a king cries through his herald. So St. Ambrose, Theophylact and others, on Luke 3. It can also be translated from the Hebrew, a crying voice: for John was both.
Note third: St. John was a voice, first, because as by the voice the word hidden in the mind is manifested to others, so the eternal Father through John manifested his Word, namely the Son hidden in the flesh, and so on. Whence it is plain. So St. Augustine, sermon 20 On the Saints.
Secondly, as the voice of one speaking forestalls the conceived thought and understanding of the hearer: so John by his preaching preceded the knowledge and faith of Christ in the minds of the Jews, and engendered it in them. So St. Gregory, homily 20 on the Gospel. Thirdly, the voice indeed precedes the word and conception of the hearer, yet follows the word which preceded in the mind of the speaker: for by the voice the speaker reveals his word and conception to the hearer: so John preceded the Word and knowledge of God in the minds of hearers; yet this Word of God preceded John, because it was from eternity. So St. Ambrose on Luke chapter 3:4, where he adds: “Because John was a voice, therefore at his birth his father, dumb, recovered his voice.” Fourthly, Epiphanius, Heresy 69, brings another analogy, who takes voice here for imperfect and inarticulate, such as heralds are wont to utter in a crowd, saying for example sus, sus, when they call for silence; because the prince is about to speak: so John was a herald calling the attention of the people, that they should receive the doctrine of Christ, in comparison with which the preaching of John was imperfect and as it were inarticulate. Fifthly, John is called a voice because of himself he said nothing: but only what he had heard from God. Sixthly, as the voice precedes the word, for by the voice the word is formed: so John Christ: “Thou shalt go before,” says Zachary, “before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways.” Seventhly, he is called a voice, because his office was not to write his oracles, as Isaias and the other Prophets did, who were therefore both voice and the pen of a scribe writing swiftly; but to preach by living voice, and to point out Christ. Eighthly, because whatever was in John was voice, he was wholly preaching penance and sanctity. Eyes, hands, garment, food, whatever in him was cried out: “Do penance, prepare the way of the Lord: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” So we commonly say: “The nightingale is all voice,” because it does nothing else but sing. Whence by the Syrians it is called Spharcolo, that is, bird of voice, that is, vocal bird, and as it were voice itself. Let the preacher be such a voice, and he will be “a hammer breaking rocks.” Finally John was a voice not slight and whispering, but crying, because with wondrous boldness, constancy, with all his spirit and strain of voice, he preached publicly, and cried out against the vices of princes and people. For the morals of men were then most corrupt, who needed to be thrown down and shaken with a loud voice.