The Live Coal from the Altar: Isaias's Cleansed Lips and the Body of Christ
Old Testament: Isaias 6:5-8
And I said: Woe is me, because I have held my peace; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King the Lord of hosts. And one of the seraphims flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: Behold this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquities shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed. And I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: Whom shall I send? and who shall go for us? And I said: Lo, here am I, send me.
New Testament: Matthew 26:26-28
And whilst they were at supper, Jesus took bread, and blessed, and broke: and gave to his disciples, and said: Take ye, and eat. This is my body. And taking the chalice, he gave thanks, and gave to them, saying: Drink ye all of this. For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.
The connection
In the year King Ozias died, Isaias saw the Lord on His throne and heard the seraphim cry "Holy, holy, holy". Isaias's first words were a confession: "Woe is me ... because I am a man of unclean lips" (Isaias 6:5). Then "one of the seraphims flew to me, and in his hand was a live coal, which he had taken with the tongs off the altar. And he touched my mouth, and said: Behold this hath touched thy lips, and thy iniquities shall be taken away, and thy sin shall be cleansed" (6:6-7). Fire from God's altar, carried to a sinner's mouth, takes his sin away. At the Last Supper the fire comes to the mouth again. "Take ye, and eat. This is my body. ... For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins" (Matthew 26:26, 28). What the seraph carried with tongs, the Church now lays on the tongue: the Body of Christ, taken from the altar. St John Damascene reads the coal this way: "Isaiah saw the coal. But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity." St Ephrem sings of the Child the Magi adored, "the Fire Who gave His Body to be eaten. The live coal drew near and sanctified, the lips that were unclean." St Ambrose and St Jerome see the two legs of the tongs as the two Testaments. The Catechism teaches that Communion separates us from sin, wiping away venial sins and preserving us from mortal ones, while mortal sin is forgiven in the sacrament of Penance (CCC 1394-1395).
Moral sense
The order matters. Isaias said "Lo, here am I, send me" (6:8) only after his lips were touched, and St Gregory the Great draws the lesson that no one "who has not been purged should dare to approach sacred ministries". The Church keeps the same order: confession, then Communion, then the dismissal that sends us out. Peter learned it by two coal fires. He denied his Lord warming himself at "a fire of coals" in the high priest's court (John 18:18, 25); after the Resurrection Christ met him at "hot coals lying, and a fish laid thereon, and bread" (21:9), and the lips that had denied Him three times were given three times to say, "thou knowest that I love thee" (21:15). The mouth that denied by one fire confessed by the other. At Pentecost the fire came to Peter's mouth a third time, "parted tongues as it were of fire" (Acts 2:3), and the man who had said "I am not" to a portress "lifted up his voice" to all Jerusalem (2:14).
Anagogical sense
The coal came from the altar Isaias saw in heaven, and the seraphim's song goes on there: "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come" (Apocalypse 4:8). At every Mass the Church sings that Sanctus just before the altar gives its fire. The lips the coal has touched are made for that song, and in heaven they will sing it without end.
The Fathers
St John Damascene, Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.13: "let us apply our eyes and lips and brows and partake of the divine coal, in order that the fire of the longing, that is in us, with the additional heat derived from the coal may utterly consume our sins and illumine our hearts ... Isaiah saw the coal. But coal is not plain wood but wood united with fire: in like manner also the bread of the communion is not plain bread but bread united with divinity." St Ephrem the Syrian, Hymns on the Nativity XV: "the magi adored the Fire Who gave His Body to be eaten. The live coal drew near and sanctified, the lips that were unclean." St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule I.7: "he who wished to be sent saw himself previously cleansed by a coal of the altar; lest any one who has not been purged should dare to approach sacred ministries". St John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew LXXXII, on Matthew 26:26-28: "What then ought not he to exceed in purity that hath the benefit of this sacrifice, than what sunbeam should not that hand be more pure which is to sever this flesh, the mouth that is filled with spiritual fire, the tongue that is reddened by that most awful blood?"
Warrant
Patristic. St John Damascene reads the coal of Isaias 6:6 as the Eucharist, bread united with divinity as the coal is wood united with fire (Exposition of the Orthodox Faith IV.13); St Ephrem calls Christ "the Fire Who gave His Body to be eaten" and joins Isaias's coal to it (Hymns on the Nativity XV). The Byzantine liturgy still gives the communicant the seraph's words, "Behold, this has touched your lips". St Ambrose (On the Christian Faith I.20) and St Jerome (Letter LIV, to Furia) make the tongs the two Testaments, and St John Cassian calls the coal "the live coal of His word sent from the altar". Checked in the Greek: the Septuagint of Isaias 6:6-7 has anthraka, a coal, taken te labidi, with the tongs, which hepsato tou stomatos mou, touched my mouth, and tas hamartias sou perikathariei, will cleanse thy sins; Matthew 26:28 gives the blood eis aphesin hamartion, for the remission of sins. The Septuagint also says the seraph apestale, was sent, before Isaias is himself sent. The two fires of Peter are both anthrakia in the Greek (John 18:18; 21:9), the word's only two uses in the New Testament; that pairing is the entry's own. The third fire, the tongues of Pentecost (Acts 2:3), is the entry's own as well; no Father in the site's corpora joins it to the coal, and the tongues have their own entry, The Tower of Babel and the Tongues of Pentecost. Dunk found the entry by asking about the seraph's coal while reading about the sword in the Servant's mouth.
Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1394.
The verses
Isaias 6:5 · Isaias 6:6 · Isaias 6:7 · Isaias 6:8 · Matthew 26:26 · Matthew 26:27 · Matthew 26:28
