I am a diocesan priest in the parish of Cyrill and Method in the Archdiocese of Vienna, and a teacher at the "Thus says the LORD: Lo, I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the things of the past shall not be remembered or come to mind." (Isa 65:17). Isaiah transmits the Lord's promise to give God's faithful yet suffering people courage: the victory will be won, finally, neither by unjust human powers nor by unfeeling powers of nature, which can repress and destroy life, but the power of love, which makes alive. God will create a new world, in which no one dies young, in which everyone is in the position to build a house for themselves and to live there.
The prophecy doesn't reject the present world so as to base hope merely in a distant future, along the lines "this world may be hopeless, but it will pass away, and I will create another." The hope is related not principally to the future, but to God, whose fidelity and love is greater than all disasters and all evil.
Many centuries later, many persons still suffer from injustice and the consequences of the forces of nature. There is still much hatred, injustice and destruction in the world. Yet what was promised to God's people can also be seen today. Where men and women trust that the victory belongs to love and goodness, and in this hope champion the winning cause, take courage to do their best to further it, we find a participation here and now in the promised new world, a gleam of this tremendous hope even in the midst of darkness.