The Book of Isaiah chapter 6 contains that amazing, dramatic account of Isaiah's call by God to be a prophet. Isaiah sees a vision of the Temple with the Lord seated on his high and lofty throne, and the train of God's garment fills the Temple. Six-winged seraphim are in attendance, and the words they call out to one another are familiar to us from Mass: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts ... heaven and earth are filled with your glory."
Isaiah believes he is surely doomed, because he has seen the Lord with his own eyes; the ancient Israelites believed no one could see God and live.
I got to thinking about how those words--"Holy, holy, holy"--ended up in our Mass. They weren't put there at the decision of a Liturgical Commission. They've been there since the earliest times because the early Christians, gathered for worship at the eucharistic sacrifice, spontaneously felt the same awe that the Prophet Isaiah did during his vision. The Lord Jesus was descending among them, and for them this was a "Wow!" moment.
What is this moment for us? All too often we recite these words "Holy, holy" as a prelude to kneeling down for the Eucharistic Prayer, or we sing them to (more often than not) banal music. How can we recapture that "Wow!"--whether it's the wonder of Isaiah as communicated to the early Christians, or its majestic expression in the "Sanctus" of J.S. Bach's B Minor Mass, or the quiet, reserved awe of Reginald Heber in his exquisite hymn "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty"? Yes, that's right--a 17th-century Lutheran musician and a 19th-century Anglican vicar have something to teach 21st-century Catholics about the amazing event that takes place on our altars at each Mass.
What happens to Isaiah after his "Wow!" moment? A seraph touches his lips with a burning ember and the Lord commissions Isaiah to go--to be the one sent to fulfill God's mission for him.
Only after being bolstered by this "Wow! experience was he sent by God on his mission. We, too, are called, called to live as Christians in an increasingly anti-Christian world. Faced with liturgies that so frequently exalt the ordinary and the banal, where do we get our "Wow!" moment?
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