Isaiah 6:1-8 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;
The whole earth is full of His glory!”
And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone!
Because 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 one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar. 7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips;
Your iniquity is taken away,
And your sin purged.”
Also 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.”
“The Ruined” are those countless ones throughout the ages who have encountered the presence of the living God to such an extent that they are “ruined” for the things of this world. They can never return for any extended time to what was formerly known as “normal life.” They are burned with a vision of the beauty of God in the face of Christ–and they seek this in everyone and everything they meet. They desire to take the invitation to enter into the divine dialogue that eternally takes place between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They have realized that there are no other pleasures left that this world can possibly offer; and so they are driven ever deeper into the mysteries of God until they drink from “the river that delights His city.” They have encountered the Resurrected Christ and have gazed into His eyes of fire with their hearts. The fire in His eyes has burned into their hearts and eyes; and they now see the entire creation bathed in the fire of God’s passionate love. As Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in his poem, “God’s Grandeur“: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. / It will flame out, like shining from shook foil…” Consequently, the rest of their lives on earth, and even onward into heaven is an eternal journey into the sacred, burning heart of Jesus.
Philippians 3:7-14 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
