Proclaim It From The Housetops

Most of us have learned to keep our faith quiet. We’ll talk about anything at the office: the weather, the game, the election, our kids. But the moment God comes up, we go still. We tell ourselves we’re being respectful of other people. Often we’re just afraid. Afraid of the look on a coworker’s face. Afraid of being the odd one at the dinner table.

Today’s readings put that fear on trial. Isaiah stands in the temple, surrounded by smoke and angels, and the only thing he can say about himself is that his lips are unclean. Then God burns those lips clean and sends him out to speak. In the Gospel, Jesus takes the same theme and sharpens it. What I whisper to you in the dark, he tells the Twelve, go shout from the rooftops.

Saint Benedict, whom the Church honors today, lived with that tension his whole life. He fled a crumbling, violent world for a cave in the mountains, and the quiet Rule he wrote there ended up forming all of Western Europe. Silence and speech, both poured out for the same Lord. So the question the Lord asks Isaiah is the question he asks us. Whom shall I send? And the follow-up from the Gospel: will you be afraid?

The Old City of Jerusalem at first light. Licensed via Adobe Stock, ID 197714610.

The Readings

First Reading: Isaiah 6:1–8

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and his train filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim; each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said:

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”

And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!”

Then flew one of the seraphim to me, having in his hand a burning coal which he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin forgiven.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”

Gospel: Matthew 10:24–33

“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master; it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.

“So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. What I tell you in the dark, utter in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim upon the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven; but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Scriptural Analysis

Isaiah dates his vision precisely: “the year that King Uzziah died” (Isaiah 6:1), around 742 BC. That detail carries weight. Uzziah had reigned in Judah for decades, and he ended his life a leper because he tried to seize the priest’s role and burn incense in the temple himself (2 Chronicles 26:16–21). So the throne of the earthly king has just gone empty, and in that same year Isaiah is shown the throne that never empties. This vision opens what commentators call the Book of Immanuel, the great arc of prophecy in chapters 7 through 12 that points toward the child who will be “God with us.”

Look at what Isaiah sees. The Lord is “high and lifted up,” and the hem of his robe alone fills the whole temple. Saint Thomas Aquinas, walking through this scene, notes that the Jerusalem temple rose in tiers, and Isaiah sees the throne set in the highest place of all, exceeding every created thing.[1] Around it stand the seraphim, whose name means “the burning ones.” Six wings each: two to cover the face, two to cover the feet, two to fly. Even these blazing angels veil themselves before God. If the seraphim hide their faces, what business do we have strolling casually into his presence?

Then comes the cry that we sing at every Mass: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” In Hebrew, you intensify a word by repeating it. Say something is holy, holy, holy, and you have reached the highest superlative the language allows. God is not merely set apart. He is set apart beyond all measure. Aquinas hears in that threefold cry the Trinity of Persons praising the one majesty of God, “the Lord of hosts,” whose glory fills the earth.[2] This is why the Church folds these very words into the Sanctus. When we sing it, we are not inventing worship. We are joining a chorus that has been going on since before the world was made.

Now watch Isaiah’s reaction, because it is the honest one. He does not feel proud that God chose him. He falls apart. “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips.” The nearer holiness comes, the more clearly a man sees his own sin. The Catechism sets Isaiah’s cry right beside Peter’s in the boat, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8), and draws the lesson: because God is holy, he can forgive the man who admits he is a sinner in his presence.[3] The unclean lips matter here. Isaiah is a prophet, a man whose whole vocation is his mouth, and he confesses that the very instrument God wants to use is defiled.

So God cleans it. A seraph takes a burning coal from the altar with tongs, touches it to Isaiah’s mouth, and declares his guilt taken away and his sin forgiven. Aquinas reads this the way the Church reads a sacrament: there is an outward action and a form of words, a physical sign that actually does what it signifies.[4] The coal from the altar of sacrifice purifies the sinner so he can be sent. And notice the angel does not say “I take away your sin.” He announces what God alone does. Forgiveness belongs to God.

Only after the lips are cleansed does the commission come. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah does not wait to be drafted. He volunteers: “Here am I! Send me.” The Catechism points out that the prophets draw their strength for mission precisely from these one-to-one encounters with God; the vision is not an escape from the world but the fuel for going back into it.[5] There is one more thread worth pulling. Aquinas, following Saint Jerome, teaches that the majesty enthroned here is the majesty of the Son of God, and he cites the Gospel of John, which says Isaiah “saw his glory and spoke of him” (John 12:41).[6] Isaiah saw Christ.

That sets up the Gospel perfectly, because the same Lord who cleansed Isaiah’s lips now sends the Twelve to open theirs. Jesus starts with a hard fact: “A disciple is not above his teacher.” If the master gets slandered, so will the household. And they have slandered the master. The name “Beelzebul” means something like “Lord of the House,” a title for Satan, and the Pharisees will hurl it at Jesus, accusing him of casting out demons by the devil’s power (Matthew 12:24).[7] If they call the head of the house Satan, the servants should not expect a warmer welcome. Jesus is being honest with his friends about the cost.

And then, three times, he says the thing they need to hear: do not be afraid. “So have no fear of them.” “Do not fear those who kill the body.” “Fear not, therefore.” Whatever the world does to a disciple, it cannot touch the one thing that lasts. Jesus draws a sharp line between body and soul. Men can kill the body. Only God has authority over the soul, “who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28). The word he uses is Gehenna, the burning valley outside Jerusalem, a picture of final ruin. Saint Augustine takes this further and asks how the soul can “die” if it is immortal. His answer: the death of the soul is sin. As the soul is the life of the body, God is the life of the soul, and a soul cut off from God is a soul gone cold.[8] So the fear Jesus commands is not the terror of men. It is the healthy fear of losing God.

To drive it home, he points to sparrows. Two of them sold for a single assarion, a small copper coin worth about a sixteenth of a day’s wage, the cheapest meat in the market.[9] And not one of those throwaway birds falls to the ground apart from the Father. Then the hairs of your head, all numbered. The logic is beautiful and plain. If God tracks the death of a penny sparrow, and if he has literally counted the hair on your head, then you are not forgotten in your trouble. You are worth more than many sparrows.

Jesus closes with the stakes: “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father.” This is where the two readings meet. Isaiah’s cleansed lips said, “Send me.” The disciple’s cleansed lips must say “I belong to Christ,” out loud, in front of people. The early Church was blunt about this. Faith in the heart and confession with the mouth belong together; Saint Paul says as much: “with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:10). A silent faith that never reaches the lips is a root with no fruit, and everyone knows what a fruitless root usually means.

Daily Application

Here is the uncomfortable, freeing truth in all of this. God has already touched your lips. He did it in the waters of Baptism and the oil of Confirmation. He does it every time the priest says “I absolve you” and every time you receive the Eucharist on your tongue. You are not standing where Isaiah stood before the coal. You are standing where he stood after it. The excuse that you are too sinful, too ordinary, too unqualified to speak about Christ has already been answered by grace.

So the fear that keeps us quiet is worth naming for what it is. Jesus called it the fear of “those who kill the body.” For most of us, it is much smaller than that. It is the fear of an awkward silence, a raised eyebrow, a reputation. Set that next to the fear Jesus actually tells us to keep, the fear of standing before the Father having denied his Son, and it shrinks to its real size. The coworker’s opinion of you will not be read out on the last day. Your acknowledgment of Christ will be.

You do not have to preach on a street corner. Start where Benedict started, small and steady. He did not set out to convert Europe. He set out to seek God in one monastery, with a Rule of prayer and work, and the witness of that ordinary faithfulness outlasted the empire that was falling around him. Your version might be praying grace at a restaurant, keeping a crucifix visible, and answering an honest question about your parish instead of deflecting. Speak in the light what he has given you in the dark.

And when you feel the old fear rise, go back to the sparrows. The God who counts the hair on your head is not going to abandon you in the one conversation where you finally say his name out loud. This is the same God whose thrice-holy praise we sing at every Mass, joining our voices to the seraphim Isaiah heard. We were made for that chorus. So do not keep it to yourself. Answer the Lord the way Isaiah did. Here am I. Send me.

Notes

1. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, ch. 6, lecture 1, trans. from the Latin (Isaiah 6:1).
2. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, ch. 6, lecture 1 (on Isaiah 6:3).
3. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997), no. 208.
4. Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, ch. 6, lecture 1 (on Isaiah 6:6–7).
5. Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2584.
6. Aquinas, Commentary on Isaiah, ch. 6, lecture 1, following Jerome (on John 12:41).
7. Curtis Mitch and Edward Sri, The Gospel of Matthew, Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), 145–46.
8. Augustine, Sermon 65, in Manlio Simonetti, ed., Matthew 1–13, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 206.
9. Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew, Sacra Pagina (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991), 150.