Prayer for Peace with God

… we name your name” (Isaiah 26:13).

It is the custom of the holy prophets to make supplications on behalf of Israel. For they were lovers of God and richly crowned with the glories of piety. And since they had sprung from the root of Abraham and from the blood of the holy fathers, they are of necessity downcast when they see those of Israel, as their own kin, perishing because of their impiety toward Christ. For this reason the blessed prophet Isaiah now comes forward and says: “Lord our God, give us peace; for you have rendered all things to us” (Isaiah 26:12). For if you grant us peace, he says, we shall be full of every good thing, and we shall have received in full the most perfect share in your gifts.

We must consider what kind of peace they ask for. Either they ask for Christ himself, for he is our peace, according to the Scriptures (Ephesians 2:14), and through him we have been joined to the Father, by kinship, that is, spiritual kinship. Or at least they mean this: those who have not yet believed, and whose stain of sin has not been cast off, stand apart from God and are rightly reckoned in the rank of enemies; they hold their necks high and fight against the laws of the Master. But those who are obedient and easily led, and ready for anything at all that those laws approve, are very dear to him and have peace with him. Yet this thing is truly given by God and comes through the generosity from above. Grant us, then, O Master, to be at peace with you, and, once profane and loathsome sin has been taken out of the way, to be united to you spiritually through Christ the Mediator.

Such is the word rightly spoken through the voice of Paul: “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). When this has come about, we shall be God’s possession and his inheritance. That is why it is wisely added: “Lord, take possession of us; apart from you we know no other; we name your name” (Isaiah 26:13). For those who are at peace with him must be single-minded and yoked to God alone, so as to know him only and not even to carry on their tongue the name of any other, falsely named god at all. For we must name him alone, because he alone is God over us by nature and in truth. The law of the all-wise Moses proclaimed something of this kind to us: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve, and by his name” (Deuteronomy 6:13; compare Matthew 4:10). Amen.

“But the dead will not see life, nor will physicians raise them up. Therefore you brought it upon them and destroyed them, and took away every male of theirs. Add evils to them, Lord; add evils to all the glorious of the earth” (Isaiah 26:14–15).

Those who know only him who is God by nature and in truth, and who name his name, and reckon to him …