O Emmanuel, you are our king and judge [lawgiver], the One whom the peoples await and their Saviour. 

O come and save us, Lord, our God.

Isaiah writes: “.. the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (7,14).

In its original context of Ahaz talking with God, this ‘sign’ foretells the birth of the future king Hezekiah, son of Ahaz (cf. Matthew’s genealogy). But later tradition has seen it as foretelling the birth of the ‘ideal’ descendant of King David through whose coming God could finally be said to be definitively with his people. 

We do not need to imagine that Isaiah foresaw the fulfilment of this prophecy in Christ; but he did express a hope which - as Matthew (1, 18-24) and the Church have seen – was perfectly fulfilled in the One whose birth at Bethlehem we shall once again be celebrating in a few weeks from now. It is he whom all people, consciously or not, are longing for. For all people, whether they know it or not, want God to be ‘with them’ – and he is most fully so in the person of Jesus Christ.