Isaiah: Name Day and Patron Saint

The Prophet Isaiah lived in Jerusalem about seven hundred years before the birth of Christ. He was of royal descent, and his father Amos raised him in the fear of God and the law of the Lord. He was called in the days of King Uzziah and prophesied for some sixty years. In a vision he saw the Lord on a high throne, surrounded by six-winged seraphim, and cried out that he was a man of unclean lips; a seraph touched his mouth with a live coal from the altar and took away his sin. When the Lord asked whom He should send, Isaiah answered, Here am I, send me. He called his people away from idols and to repentance, and he spoke of the Messiah so clearly that the Church calls him the Old Testament evangelist: he foretold that a Virgin would conceive and bear a Son, that the Servant of God would suffer for the sins of the world, and that He would rise and His Church spread to all nations. When Jerusalem was besieged and thirsty, his prayer brought forth the spring of Siloam, where Christ later sent the man born blind to wash and see. By his prayer King Hezekiah was given fifteen more years of life. Under King Manasseh he was martyred, sawn in two, and his relics were later brought to Constantinople. The Church keeps his memory on 9 May (22 May on the Old Calendar), and the faithful ask his prayers for repentance and for hope in Christ.

What the faithful pray for

• true repentance and a cleansed heart
• the readiness to answer God’s call
• the sick, as he prayed for King Hezekiah
• those who thirst and those who wait for help
• hope in Christ born of the Virgin