Commentaria in Isaiam
And a little child shall lead them. The Gentiles fable that Hercules, while still in his cradle, crushed serpents; but this our little Emmanuel truly did, who from his birth began to subject to himself and to his Gospel the Magi, the Shepherds and others. So St. Justin, Against Trypho. Again, the “little child” is any humble Apostle and preacher, who leads the people, that is, guides, teaches and rules them. So St. Cyril, Jerome and others everywhere. This most clearly came to pass in the primitive Church, Acts of the Brazilians, Japanese, Indians; likewise in well-ordered religious houses, where the spirit of Christ is most kept and flourishes: there one may see the proud and fierce become humble and gentle as lambs. For this is what St. Francis said: “The more contemptible he who presides, the more the humility of the obedient pleases.” Hence he himself, says St. Bonaventure in his Life, chapter 6, “used always to promise obedience to the brother with whom he was accustomed to go, and to keep it, saying that for the obedient no time passes without gain; and he said: Among other things which the divine goodness has graciously granted me, it has bestowed this grace, that I would obey a novice of one hour as carefully, if a Guardian were given me, as the oldest and most discreet brother; for a subject ought to regard his Prelate not as a man, but in him the one for love of whom he is subject.” See similar things in Climacus, in the step On obedience. Isaias signifies here, therefore, that in the Church of Christ there will be the highest humility, peace, subordination, and obedience of all under any Prelate, even an ignoble, unlearned and imperfect one.
Verse 7. Their young ones shall rest together. That is: the peace of Christ shall reach the children’s children, and those who shall be born of them. This is what Tertullian elegantly says, Against Hermogenes, chapter 11, that under Christ “the cattle have made a pact with the beasts,” that is, have associated themselves.
The lion shall eat straw like the ox. He says and urges the same here, as also in the following metaphor; as if to say: Savage men, proud and wise in worldly things, laying aside their savagery, pride and the swelling of secular learning, will put on the ways of the meek, and live together with them, and use the same table and food with them, both bodily and spiritual: for they will eat not flesh, as before, but straw, that is, the food of the meek and simple, namely the first rudiments of faith. Hence St. Ambrose, book 1 On Penance, chapter 12, reads: “The lion shall eat straw with the ox.” So Aeschylus said that a lion is not to be nourished in a commonwealth, that is, savage, proud men and tyrants. And Plato asserted that in his commonwealth we nourish at home various kinds of brutes. Indeed Aristotle in the Politics says that man alienated from law and justice is the worst of all animals. Finally St. Chrysostom: “Every beast,” he says, “has one proper evil; but man has all.”
Others understand by the lion unlearned men, but full of faith; by the straw the simple words of Scripture, or the letter itself; by the wheat its inner marrow and hidden sense; and they predict that unlearned men, such as I have described, not grasping the mysteries of Scripture, will be fed by its bare and simple reading. So St. Jerome and others.
Verse 8. And the weaned child shall play on the hole of the asp. That is: infants scarcely taken from the breast will not shudder at asps, but will play with them, and put their hands confidently into their dens; that is, the newly converted, even youths and boys, will deal freely and confidently with idolaters and tyrants, will meet little kings fearlessly, and announce the faith to them, and will not shrink, but will court death and martyrdom: for they will rejoice to preach to tyrants who at first wish to harm them; but taught by them and tamed, they will cast away the poison of unbelief and believe the Gospel.
Hear the examples of boys contending with tyrants and triumphing. Josaphat, a youth, contended with his father and king Abennar, and conquered; and converted his father and the whole kingdom to Christ: Damascene is witness in his History. Asclepiades orders the little boy to be beheaded. The mother held her son in her embrace and bosom. The executioner demanded the boy; the mother did not weep, only, having impressed a kiss on him, bade him farewell, and while the executioner cut the little neck, the mother, taught to sing the psalms of David, chanted: “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.”
Among the Homerites, says Procopius, and from him Baronius, a boy Martyr gave a striking proof of a manly spirit; for seeing his mother cast into the fire, he bit the tyrant’s thigh, and ran to her, and so, together with his mother, was sent through the sacrifice to God as a sweet-smelling offering: more on this at Lamentations 3:27.
Victor of Utica, book 3 of the Vandal persecution, relates that twelve little boy singers, separated by force from their orthodox confessors, were tempted by the Arians, first with caresses, then with repeated scourging; but they stood firm, so that the Arians blushed to be overcome by boys, and the orthodox exulted and were strengthened. These boys, he says, “Carthage now venerates with wondrous affection, and looks upon as a choir of twelve boy Apostles. They live together, eat together, sing psalms together, glory together in the Lord.”
Prudentius relates in the book Peristephanon, or On the Crowns, that a little boy not yet seven, at the request of a most noble Roman Martyr, before the prefect Asclepiades constantly asserted the essence of the one God and the Godhead of Christ, rejecting the multitude of the pagan gods. His mother having been summoned, the tyrant ordered the executioners to lift the lad on high and beat him with rods: while all wept at so cruel a sight, the mother, with undaunted face and serene brow, obstinate for love of Christ, stood amid the pains. “The little one cries out that he is thirsty”; but the mother, rebuking him, says that a Christian does not give way to death, that the water of life in Christ suffices, that the perennial fountain is near, that the cup of the Bethlehemite infants is to be drained. She recalls the obedience of little Isaac, and the constancy of the seven boys in the history of the Machabees. The little boy with manly spirit laughs at the whistling rods and the pains of his wounds, and as victor mocks the torturers and the tyrant. Asclepiades, driven to rage.
When the prefect of the emperor Valens at Edessa, accompanied by a band of many soldiers, was hastening to the temple where the Christians had assembled, to carry out the Emperor’s anger against them, a certain very poor woman, dragging her little son by the hand to martyrdom, was running, and broke the file of the prefect’s guards. The prefect, indignant, ordered the woman to be brought to him, and addressed her, saying: “Whither do you run so heedlessly, unhappy woman?” She answered: “Where the others run.” He in turn said: “Have you not heard that the prefect will put to death all whom he finds there?” The woman said: “I have heard, and for that reason I hasten, that I too may be found there. But why,” he said, “do you bring the boy too?” She answered: “That he too may be a partaker of the same crown.” Hearing this, the Prefect wondered at the madness of those who assembled, and went to the Emperor, and informed him that all were ready to die for their faith, and that it was not consonant with reason that so great a number of men be killed in a short time; and so he persuaded the Emperor to lay aside his anger. So Socrates, History, book 4, chapter 16. Of the Iberians led to the faith of Christ by a Christian captive maidservant, Baronius relates marvels from Rufinus and Eusebius, in the year of Christ 397.
Again, “the weaned child shall play on the hole of the asp”: that is, simple believers will rejoice to cast out demons from the bodies of the possessed, who are rightly called the hole of the asp. This was fulfilled in the Apostles, to whom it was given by Christ to tread upon serpents and scorpions, and upon all the power of the enemy. So St. Jerome.
And he that shall be weaned (that is, one now advanced in the faith, as well) in the den of the basilisk: that is, he will break in upon the fierce nations, indeed in their dens, caves (as is done among the Indians), shrines and temples he will preach the faith of Christ. So St. Jerome and others, except St. Cyril, who understands by the asp heretics, and by the basilisk the demon.
So St. Francis Xavier in India sent boys who taught the faith of Christ to their parents and neighbours, and demolished their idols, and by the cross and pious prayers cured the sick, and drove demons from the possessed, as Tursellinus relates in his Life, book 2, chapters 6 and 7.
So also Gaspar Barzaeus, a disciple of Xavier, leading a troop of boys in procession at Ormuz, broke into the mosque, or church of Mahomet, and fixed the cross of Christ on its summit; the Saracens, struck, fled, and the Christians occupied the place, and, having purified it, dedicated it to the Blessed Virgin, called Victorious from the mountain, as Father Nicolas Trigault relates in his Life, book 2, chapter 19.
So the Brazilians and other Indians were converted by our Fathers and others, chiefly through their boys. For these boys, like blank tablets, took in Christianity more tenaciously, and instilled it into their parents and others.