“Many crowds followed Jesus, and he cured all of them, and he ordered them not to make him known.  This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

            “Here is my servant, whom I have chosen, my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.  I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.  He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.  He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick until he brings justice to victory.  And in his name the Gentiles will hope.”

“He will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.”

In the time of Jesus, the Gentiles were essentially the non-Jewish people.  So we can rephrase this and the successive passage as “He will proclaim justice to us and in his name we will hope.”  What does this mean, “we will find justice?”  Justice is giving to each their due.  By our redeemed human nature – redeemed because Jesus took on our human nature and obeyed the Father – our due is eternal sonship and glory in the Father.  Yet our hard and impertinent hearts must be replaced first with natural hearts.  This he will accomplish too, pulling up the weeds in our heart without disturbing the harvest – his Word – which has taken root in us.  What little he finds in us will be preserved, for the “bruised reed he will not crush, the smoldering wick he will not quench” for the reed is still a reed, though bruised, the wick still a wick to be used, though it be smoldering.

            What does this mean “in his name we will hope?”  The opposite of hope is despair.  At its most fundamental level despair is an interior disposition and a belief that we have lost the kingdom – our inheritance.  We know in our hearts we are called to an eternal inheritance.  One cannot despair losing that which was never possible in the first place.  We know of our eternal inheritance in the depths of our hearts, where God speaks.  That is why Christ does not “call out in the streets” or raise a clamor, for these things are not “up in the heavens” or “across the seas.”  Indeed, they are written in our very hearts. (Deut.)  But we also know intuitively that we cannot attain to this kingdom of our own strength, because we have been cast out of the garden.  “For man it is impossible.”  Thus man struggled with the constant temptation to despair prior to the Incarnation.  To maintain hope until Christ appeared we were given the law and the prophets.  And then Christ appeared, telling us “but for God all things are possible.”  Thus it is that in his name we hope.

            We have been bruised by original sin and our wick is smoldering but God does not crush what he has made and we have defiled.  His justice is everlasting and so he has destroyed the tempter who has brought us to this state, and the vestiges of darkness in us, and will give back to us that which was our original due.  “I have already overcome the world.”