Lesson at Matins – Isaias xxviii. 16‒18
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, I will lay a stone in the foundations of Sion, a tried stone, a corner stone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation. He that believes, let him not hasten. And I will set judgement in weight, and justice in measure: and hail will overturn the hope of falsehood, and waters will overflow its protection. And your league with death will be abolished, and your covenant with Hell will not stand.”Thanks be to God.
Dom Prosper Guéranger:
Heavenly Father! You are preparing to set in the foundations of Sion a corner Stone that is tried and solid, and this Stone, which is to give firmness to Sion, which is your Church, this Stone is your Incarnate Son. It was prefigured, as your Apostle assures us (1 Corinthians x. 4) by that Rock of the desert which yielded the abundant and saving stream that quenched the thirst of your people. But now you are about to give us the reality. It has already come down from Heaven, and the hour is fast approaching when you will lay it in the foundations. O sacred Stone, which makes all one and gives solidity to the whole structure! By you it will come to pass that there will be no longer Jew nor Gentile, but all nations will become one family. Men will no more build on sand, nor set up houses which floods and storms may overturn. The Church will rise up from the Stone which God now sets, and, secure on the great foundation, her summit will touch the clouds. With all his weakness, and all his fickleness, man will partake of your immutability, O divine Stone, if he will but lean on you. Woe to him that rejects you, for you have said, and you are the eternal Truth: “Whoever will fall upon that Stone, will be bruised; and upon whomever it will fall, it will grind him to powder” (Matthew xxi. 44). From this twofold evil, you that are chief Corner-stone, deliver us and never permit us to be of the number of those blind men who rejected you. Give us grace ever to honour and love you as the cause of our strength and the one sole origin of our solidity: and since you have communicated this your quality of the Rock to one of your Apostles, and by him to his successors to the end of the world, grant us ever to cling to this Rock, the Holy Roman Church, in union with which all the faithful on the face of the Earth are preparing to celebrate the glorious solemnity of your Coming, precious and tried Stone! You are coming that you may destroy the kingdom of falsehood and break the league which mankind had made with death and Hell.
