Post by Deleted on Oct 28, 2023 3:44:33 GMT
Pope Pius XI once said “Spiritually, we are all Semites”. Indeed, Christianity is a Semitic religion, imbued with the heritage of the religion of the Hebrew people. One needs only attend Mass, to hear the Hebrew words “Amen”, “Alleluia”, and “Sabaoth”. Our entire Old Testament was written by Hebrew people, and expounds the history of their struggle as God’s chosen people. Our prophets, from Moses to Isaiah to Malachi were Hebrews, Semites, and Jews. The Word Incarnate was a Jew. Our religion is not anti-Jewish, but completely imbued with a Semitic religious spirit.
However, the Catholic Church teaches and has always taught that the Church herself is the New Israel, God’s chosen people. For Our Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfil the prophecies of the Jewish prophets.
As it is written in the Book of the Prophet Zechariah [9:9]: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.
I could cite every other Hebrew prophecy which Our Lord fulfilled in His coming, but it is unnecessary. Our Lord fulfilled the Hebrew messianic prophecies, for He came, as He said himself, to save “the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel” [Matt. 15:24]. Yes, it was also written in Isaiah, that the messiah would come as a light to the gentiles, and this, from the Hebrew prophets themselves, is the basis for the new ideal of God’s chosen people, who are neither Jew nor Greek, and are not chosen not based on race, but on belief in Jesus Christ and membership in His body the Church.
Our Lord instituted with His coming a New Covenant, that superseded the old, and called the Hebrew people to join in one body with the gentile believers. This is the Church, the New Israel, Semitic in Spirit but usually not in ethnicity. Our Lord said: “This cup, poured out for you, is the New Covenant in my blood”. [Luke 22:20]. In the Epistle to the Hebrews [8: 6-13] it is written “Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second.”
So the institution of the New Covenant to supersede the old is clear. We must in this sense differentiate between Judaism before the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ and after it. Until the destruction of the Temple in around 70 AD – after which the Jews went into exile – Judaism was a religion completely different to modern Judaism. It was apostolic and sacrificial. It was a type (a foreshadowing) of apostolic Christianity. It had priests who were ordained by laying on of hands, and sacrifices were offered at the altar of the Temple. Post-Temple Judaism, as it exists today, is a completely different religion. There are no priests, and no sacrifices. Modern Judaism is a reconstruction of the old Judaism, which was destroyed, surely by God’s providence, as a sign to the Jews that the old religion was no longer valid, and that the new Judaism, in true form, is actually Christianity.
To say that Christianity is the new Judaism is not a contradiction. No, we do not identify as Jews, but the religion of God’s chosen people before the coming of Our Saviour was apostolic and sacrificial Judaism, which is fulfilled in its entirety and perfection in the holy apostolic Christian faith, found in its purity and fullness in the Catholic Church.
In other words, we can say that logically Christianity is much closer to pre-Christian Judaism than the so-called “Rabbinical Judaism” which those who claim to be religious Jews follow today, for Christianity is the complete fulfilment of Judaism. Amongst the Christians are not only gentiles, but those Jews who understand this, and took up the call of the Saviour to believe in Him for salvation. In our times, such eminent Christians of Jewish identification include the late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, whose family was killed at Auschwitz.
This all has a lot to do with the ideology of Zionism. Because Zionism applied in the way it is often is surely a blasphemy. We Christians are Zionists, because we strive for that heavenly homeland, the Holy City of Heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion, which is promised to those who believe in Christ and remain faithful to His promises. For us Christians, Zion is not a physical space, but a spiritual one; it is not a location on Earth, but a state of being in Heaven.
Modern Zionism, conversely, refers to that movement founded by secular Jews in Austria-Hungary in the late-19th century, particularly by Theodore Herzl. It holds that the Jews must go to Palestine, and found their own state. Of course, the fruit of this is the modern “State of Israel”. Now nobody could deny the Jews were terribly persecuted over the years. Yes, they wrongly refused to accept Our Lord, but that did not justify the evil, terrible persecution they suffered, particularly at the hands of the odious Nazis. Modern Zionism has nothing to do with Christianity. It is based on the assumption of a religion that is no longer valid, on the ideal that the Jews are still God’s chosen people, though we know from scripture and tradition that they only remain truly God’s chosen people if they are in unity with the Church.
Pope Pius X told Theodore Herzl in 1903: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people. The Jewish religion was the foundation of our own; but it was superseded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot concede it any further validity. The Jews, who ought to have been the first to acknowledge Jesus Christ, have not done so to this day.”
Modern Zionism, quite aside from it being based on stealing and the immoral taking of land, is actually a blasphemous movement, for it uses the sacred term “Zion” to refer to the creation of a secular homeland for a people whose whole identity is based around their non-acceptance of Christianity.
There is no religious significance to the modern “State of Israel”. Spiritually, however, it is not irrelevant. It has religious significance, but only insofar as we must condemn this name “Israel” being misused in such a way, when actually it refers to the Church, the New Israel.
I am a Roman Catholic, yet some of my ancestors were Jews from the western part of Russia, now Lithuania, who were the victims of pogroms and persecutions for centuries. No Christian is permitted to have any hatred for the Jews, and the mistakes of the past cry out to us as a warning: do not mistreat or persecute the Jews! We must love them, and burn with the desire for their salvation, but only in Jesus Christ will they be saved. Therefore, it seems fitting, in the words of our Good Friday Prayer for the Jewish people, to pray in the words that the Roman liturgy gives to us from her rich and solemn tradition. The following prayer was approved by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008:
Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all men. Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
However, the Catholic Church teaches and has always taught that the Church herself is the New Israel, God’s chosen people. For Our Lord Jesus Christ came to fulfil the prophecies of the Jewish prophets.
As it is written in the Book of the Prophet Zechariah [9:9]: Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on an ass, on a colt the foal of an ass.
I could cite every other Hebrew prophecy which Our Lord fulfilled in His coming, but it is unnecessary. Our Lord fulfilled the Hebrew messianic prophecies, for He came, as He said himself, to save “the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel” [Matt. 15:24]. Yes, it was also written in Isaiah, that the messiah would come as a light to the gentiles, and this, from the Hebrew prophets themselves, is the basis for the new ideal of God’s chosen people, who are neither Jew nor Greek, and are not chosen not based on race, but on belief in Jesus Christ and membership in His body the Church.
Our Lord instituted with His coming a New Covenant, that superseded the old, and called the Hebrew people to join in one body with the gentile believers. This is the Church, the New Israel, Semitic in Spirit but usually not in ethnicity. Our Lord said: “This cup, poured out for you, is the New Covenant in my blood”. [Luke 22:20]. In the Epistle to the Hebrews [8: 6-13] it is written “Christ has obtained a ministry which is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion for a second.”
So the institution of the New Covenant to supersede the old is clear. We must in this sense differentiate between Judaism before the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ and after it. Until the destruction of the Temple in around 70 AD – after which the Jews went into exile – Judaism was a religion completely different to modern Judaism. It was apostolic and sacrificial. It was a type (a foreshadowing) of apostolic Christianity. It had priests who were ordained by laying on of hands, and sacrifices were offered at the altar of the Temple. Post-Temple Judaism, as it exists today, is a completely different religion. There are no priests, and no sacrifices. Modern Judaism is a reconstruction of the old Judaism, which was destroyed, surely by God’s providence, as a sign to the Jews that the old religion was no longer valid, and that the new Judaism, in true form, is actually Christianity.
To say that Christianity is the new Judaism is not a contradiction. No, we do not identify as Jews, but the religion of God’s chosen people before the coming of Our Saviour was apostolic and sacrificial Judaism, which is fulfilled in its entirety and perfection in the holy apostolic Christian faith, found in its purity and fullness in the Catholic Church.
In other words, we can say that logically Christianity is much closer to pre-Christian Judaism than the so-called “Rabbinical Judaism” which those who claim to be religious Jews follow today, for Christianity is the complete fulfilment of Judaism. Amongst the Christians are not only gentiles, but those Jews who understand this, and took up the call of the Saviour to believe in Him for salvation. In our times, such eminent Christians of Jewish identification include the late Cardinal Lustiger of Paris, whose family was killed at Auschwitz.
This all has a lot to do with the ideology of Zionism. Because Zionism applied in the way it is often is surely a blasphemy. We Christians are Zionists, because we strive for that heavenly homeland, the Holy City of Heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion, which is promised to those who believe in Christ and remain faithful to His promises. For us Christians, Zion is not a physical space, but a spiritual one; it is not a location on Earth, but a state of being in Heaven.
Modern Zionism, conversely, refers to that movement founded by secular Jews in Austria-Hungary in the late-19th century, particularly by Theodore Herzl. It holds that the Jews must go to Palestine, and found their own state. Of course, the fruit of this is the modern “State of Israel”. Now nobody could deny the Jews were terribly persecuted over the years. Yes, they wrongly refused to accept Our Lord, but that did not justify the evil, terrible persecution they suffered, particularly at the hands of the odious Nazis. Modern Zionism has nothing to do with Christianity. It is based on the assumption of a religion that is no longer valid, on the ideal that the Jews are still God’s chosen people, though we know from scripture and tradition that they only remain truly God’s chosen people if they are in unity with the Church.
Pope Pius X told Theodore Herzl in 1903: “The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people. The Jewish religion was the foundation of our own; but it was superseded by the teachings of Christ, and we cannot concede it any further validity. The Jews, who ought to have been the first to acknowledge Jesus Christ, have not done so to this day.”
Modern Zionism, quite aside from it being based on stealing and the immoral taking of land, is actually a blasphemous movement, for it uses the sacred term “Zion” to refer to the creation of a secular homeland for a people whose whole identity is based around their non-acceptance of Christianity.
There is no religious significance to the modern “State of Israel”. Spiritually, however, it is not irrelevant. It has religious significance, but only insofar as we must condemn this name “Israel” being misused in such a way, when actually it refers to the Church, the New Israel.
I am a Roman Catholic, yet some of my ancestors were Jews from the western part of Russia, now Lithuania, who were the victims of pogroms and persecutions for centuries. No Christian is permitted to have any hatred for the Jews, and the mistakes of the past cry out to us as a warning: do not mistreat or persecute the Jews! We must love them, and burn with the desire for their salvation, but only in Jesus Christ will they be saved. Therefore, it seems fitting, in the words of our Good Friday Prayer for the Jewish people, to pray in the words that the Roman liturgy gives to us from her rich and solemn tradition. The following prayer was approved by Pope Benedict XVI in 2008:
Let us also pray for the Jews: That our God and Lord may illuminate their hearts, that they acknowledge Jesus Christ is the Saviour of all men. Almighty and eternal God, who want that all men be saved and come to the recognition of the truth, propitiously grant that even as the fullness of the peoples enters Thy Church, all Israel be saved. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen.
