Commentaria in Isaiam
Mystically, St. Bernard, sermon 5 on these words of Isaias, takes by the two wings nature and grace: “With a lively intellect, indeed, by nature, and a fervent affection nonetheless by grace, continually stretched and intent upon him who is above them, they are said to stand indeed by their ministry, but to fly by their zeal. For although they veil the head of the Lord, and veil also his feet, yet they do not veil these things to themselves; rather they fly diligently and flit among these things, searching out the heights of his power and the depths of his wisdom”; and soon after: “That proud Lucifer, bearing light, not having fire, leaning on one wing only, could cause a fall, not a flight. For he exulted to be bright, not fervent, not kindled, which Seraphim signifies. The vivacity of nature lifted him up, but plainly to his own ruin, since the lack of grace soon cast him down.”
3. And they cried one to another.—Namely the Son to the Holy Spirit, says Origen, homily 4, but wrongly. For it is plain from what precedes that Seraphim are here meant. Prado above and Pererius on Apocalypse 4, disputation 1, think that four Seraphim were seen by Isaias; hence he saw twenty-four wings (for four times six make 24), which signified the twenty-four ancients, of whom Apocalypse 4:4.
Where also verse 8, the four living creatures, that is four Cherubim, cry: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God”; and St. Dionysius, chap. 13 of the Celestial Hierarchy, seems to suggest this, who nevertheless elsewhere signifies the contrary; second, Forerius and Arias think that very many Seraphim were seen by Isaias: for they are innumerable; for Isaias uses the plural number, not the dual; third, others, and more truly, think that only two Seraphim were seen by Isaias. And that first, because this is what these words properly signify: “They cried one to another”; second, because these Seraphim were like the Cherubim of the propitiatory; and those were two, Exodus 25; third, because the Church in the eighth responsory of the Sunday after Pentecost sings: “Two Seraphim cried one to another.”
So St. Dionysius, Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, chap. 4, part 3, twice making mention of twelve wings, and Origen, book 1 Periarchon, chap. 3, St. Jerome here, Philastrius, heresy 101, St. Bernard, treatise On Four Words of Isaias, sermon 3. Which understand thus: only two more illustrious and as it were princes of the Seraphim appeared to Isaias, the rest standing behind their princes; for God is the Lord of Sabaoth, that is of hosts. And so this opinion reconciles with the second. For this reason the Arabic version has disagion, not trisagion: “They cried,” it says, “Holy, holy,” to signify that they sang alternately, after the manner of a choir, not that it denies the trisagion. For these words “one to another” signify that they sang antiphonally, that is, with alternate voices, as is done in a choir of those chanting psalms. So the Fathers commonly; hence Damascene, treatise On the Trisagion, teaches that from these Seraphim the Church learned the choir, that is, the manner of singing and chanting alternately. So also St. Ignatius the Martyr, as Socrates witnesses, book 6, Hist. chap. 8, Nicephorus, book 13, chap. 8, Cassiodorus, Amalarius, Hilary and others saw Angels chanting alternately, and from this he introduced alternate psalmody into the Church. St. Magdalen, doing penance in her cave, heard the same Angels lifting her up seven times a day. Psalmody, then, is a heavenly and angelic work, so that the Psalmist rightly says, Psalm 137:1: “I will sing praise to thee in the sight of the Angels,” as if to say: I will take up the office of the Angels before Angels, and with Angels I will sing to thee. Hence Cyril notes that the Seraphim sang “Holy” alternately, not because they grew weary of singing, but because they pay one another mutual honour; for all heavenly things are ordered and harmonious. Above all they did this to teach men to sing in choir by turns, and so to praise God continually and harmoniously, and to rouse one another and all men to the praise of God. In the same way an Angel, singing twelve psalms with prayers between them, taught the same manner of psalmody to the Egyptian monks, as Cassian testifies, book 2 of the Institutes.
HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. They repeat “Holy” three times. First, to signify the most holy Trinity in the unity of essence. So teach St. Ambrose, book 3 On the Holy Spirit, chapter 23; Nazianzen, oration On the Pasch; Damascene at length in his work on the Trisagion; St. Jerome and Cyril, Procopius, Origen, homily 4 on this place, and others everywhere. Hear Damascene: “The Godhead,” he says, “is sanctified threefold and glorified when it is said three times, Holy, holy, holy; and again the three hypostases are glorified with one glory only, when it is said: The Lord God of hosts, all the earth is full of his glory. The Father is holy, therefore, the Son is holy, the Holy Spirit is holy. We call the Godhead and the Trinity thrice holy, therefore, but not any single person of it.” And he adds: “Not on account of the number of persons does the Trinity have divinity; but because the divinity is in the Trinity, therefore the number three has been made perfect.” The same is taught by St. Augustine, book On Faith to Peter, chapter 1, by the Fifth General Synod, which was the Second of Constantinople, and by the whole Church. Wherefore Calvin wrongly denies this here, and asserts that against the Arians we must use plainer passages, lest we be made ridiculous to them: “And surely,” he says, “by this repetition untiring assiduity is rather marked, as if the Prophet had said that there is no end to the angelic melody in singing the praises of God, just as his holiness supplies us with an inexhaustible matter for them.” So that braggart applauds the Arians, and makes all the Fathers ridiculous to them. Did not Hunnius with good reason write a work against Calvin with this title: Calvin turned Arian? This passage, therefore, like the whole of Isaias, the Belgian Carpentier has learnedly rendered in heroic verse as follows:
O holy, holy, O Lord, at last thrice holy! O King of armies, Lord and mighty in war! For holy is that great Father, origin of all and fount of good, who fills the vast world with his divinity. Holy too is the Son of the supreme Father, begotten before the morning star, maker of a better age, Voice and thought of the most high God, whom from on high the Father poured forth from his mind, and gave him partnership in his great kingdom. Holy too is that fire, the kindling of divine love, flowing from the Begetter through the Son, of one and the same Godhead, the love common to both.
Second, to signify that God is an abyss of holiness, from which Angels as well as men and Christ share all their holiness, as rays draw their light from the sun. For all things are three, says Aristotle. Hence this canticle is called trisagion, that is, thrice holy, that is, most holy; as Mercury was called trismegistus, that is, thrice greatest, because he was at once king, priest and teacher, or theologian. Wherefore the Chaldee version has: Holy in the highest heavens, the house of his majesty; holy upon the earth, which is the work of his power; holy for ever, and for ever and ever, the Lord of hosts. For this reason they repeat, and sing nothing else than “Holy,” as though this were their whole and unceasing office and business, namely to praise the holiness of God; so we too ought unceasingly to praise God in word and in life. Hear Procopius: “The Seraphim,” he says, “repeat their holy praises not once only, but often, indeed even countless times,” that is, they repeat the trisagion.
Third, to signify that he who would go to God in heaven must be holy; and that God will not leave anything polluted or unclean unpunished in his world, nor allow it with impunity in his sight, and that he will sharply punish above all the impiety and crimes of the Jews, which Isaias rebukes in this chapter and the preceding, chiefly through their blinding and hardening.
Hence, from this hymn of the Seraphim, the Church takes up the trisagion as if angelic, indeed Seraphic, in the Preface of the Mass, and this already from the time of the Apostles, the whole people, or the clergy and choir for the people, singing: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts,” as Clement testifies, book 8 of the Constitutions, chapter 16. Moreover the Greeks, and from them the Latins on Good Friday, added epithets to the trisagion, saying: “Holy God, holy and mighty, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.” This hymn The glory of God is the fullness of the whole earth, that is, he fills the whole earth. So all the ancients. Glory here will then be the same as praise, as in Habacuc 3:3: “The earth is full of his praise.” Glory occurs in the same sense in the parallel places, Num.
at Constantinople, was revealed by God to root out the heresy of Eutyches (who taught that there is only one nature in Christ, as there is one person; and since that nature seemed to be divine rather than human, it followed that God is in himself mortal, and that the Godhead in Christ suffered and was crucified, which is heretical), then raging; it was revealed to a boy snatched up into the air, who was to tell it, received from the Angels, to Proclus the Archbishop and others, that by singing it they might implore the help and mercy of God. They did so, and soon the earthquake ceased, as Damascene relates in his treatise On the Trisagion, and Nicephorus, book 14, chapter 46. See also Pope Felix and Acacius of Constantinople, in the letter to Peter the Fuller (Gnapheus), a follower of Eutyches; they condemn him because he added to the trisagion “who was crucified for us,” as if the whole Trinity had been crucified, or as if the trisagion belonged to the Son alone, and the most holy Trinity were only one person, namely the Son, as Sabellius wished. See the Second Council of Constantinople held against him, and Baronius in the year of Christ Rhodiginus, book 12, chapter 4, adds this crowning word to what has been said of God: “Holy God, Father of all. Holy God, whose will is fulfilled by his own powers. Holy God, who makest thyself known to thy intimates. Holy art thou, whom nature never created. Holy art thou, stronger than every power. Holy art thou, greater than all excellence. Holy art thou, better than all praise. Receive the holy sacrifices of words, flowing from a soul and a heart given up to thee, ineffable, to be proclaimed by silence alone.”