“Comfort, give comfort to my people.” For any fan of Handel’s Messiah these word set a tone for Advent. They serve as a vivid reminder that one aspect of the prophetic dimension of the Church is to comfort those who are afflicted. This passage is taken from chapter 40 of the Prophet Isaiah. Scholars believe that the man Isaiah himself had lived almost two centuries before the later chapters of the book which bears his name were written. His message of hope and trust in God had inspired people over the centuries and at the supreme moment of trial during the Babylonian exile they invoked his memory again — similarly to the way the play Hamilton recalls today’s Americans to the values of the founding fathers.