The suppressed article ‘Mystery of the Jewish People’ archived, de fide Catholic doctrine on the Jews
Mystery of the Jewish People Judaism Select LanguageAfrikaansAlbanianAmharicArabicArmenianAssameseAymaraAzerbaijaniBambaraBasqueBelarusianBengaliBhojpuriBosnianBulgarianCatalanCebuanoChichewaChinese (Simplified)Chinese (Traditional)CorsicanCroatianCzechDanishDhivehiDogriDutchEsperantoEstonianEweFilipinoFinnishFrenchFrisianGalicianGeorgianGermanGreekGuaraniGujaratiHaitian CreoleHausaHawaiianHebrewHindiHmongHungarianIcelandicIgboIlocanoIndonesianIrishItalianJapaneseJavaneseKannadaKazakhKhmerKinyarwandaKonkaniKoreanKrioKurdish (Kurmanji)Kurdish (Sorani)KyrgyzLaoLatinLatvianLingalaLithuanianLugandaLuxembourgishMacedonianMaithiliMalagasyMalayMalayalamMalteseMaoriMarathiMeiteilon (Manipuri)MizoMongolianMyanmar (Burmese)NepaliNorwegianOdia (Oriya)OromoPashtoPersianPolishPortuguesePunjabiQuechuaRomanianRussianSamoanSanskritScots GaelicSepediSerbianSesothoShonaSindhiSinhalaSlovakSlovenianSomaliSpanishSundaneseSwahiliSwedishTajikTamilTatarTeluguThaiTigrinyaTsongaTurkishTurkmenTwiUkrainianUrduUyghurUzbekVietnameseWelshXhosaYiddishYorubaZulu Powered by Translate Home donations Antisemitism expulsions necessity of antisemitism Torah Jesus in the Talmud the Holy Trinity forgiveness Covenants the Church on the Jews Mystery of the Jewish People Who is human? abortion Jews and Blacks Perpetrators Goy Guide to World History How they do it disarming goyim Chabad the lobby banksters Rothschilds Swindlers list assassins hate pimps Epstein Mossad Jew media metastases kosher internet aftermath shapeshifters marranos donmeh kosher racket Muslims burning churches goy accomplices Catholic action Genocide World Wars Ritual Murder Israelis target children organ harvesting 1948 Big Lies Torah encourages lies Jesus was a Jew Hebrew Bible Kol Nidre Noahide deceit synagogue and state holocaust Nuremberg Judeo-Christian the Romans did it land without a people save any life false flags name calling high IQ Perversion pedophilia and sodomy Torah on women Torah on trannies potty voyeurs sicko sages Paganism kabbalah transmigration Resources documentaries ethical vaccines sacred art memes funny videos cosmology theological certainty levels of sin dispositions for a good death fallacies archive raw data Usury Pharisees Mary marks of the Church sola scriptura once saved private interpretation do this idols purgatory Christian Zionism call no man father asleep Sunday worship Inquisition phony victims Christmas slavery blushing Marxists New Order of Pharisees Jorge Opus Dei dishonorable mentions News jew flu SSPX third temple Putin Trump Kushner get the memo Soros self-reflection China Japan Italy France Iceland Hungary Poland Ireland Britain Antarctica two Lucys search Covenants • Mystery of the Jewish People in History by Rev. Frs. Michael Crowdy & Kenneth Novak Originally printed in the April 1997 issue of The Angelus magazine. https://archive.is/i56Jz It cannot be denied that the subject of the Jewish people is both very difficult and very fascinating. Difficult, because the Jewish people is present in all history both divine and human. There is no period of history about which one can write without mentioning them. Says the Jewish author of Jesus Told by the Wandering Jew (Editions Fleg, p.177): “There are two mysteries of history. Jesus is a mystery as Israel is a mystery! And when you put these two mysteries together, do I have to tell what results? —A third mystery, more mysterious by itself than the two others!” And fascinating, because who can concern himself with the Jewish people without a feeling of admiration or pity, or of both at the same time? The Jewish people brought Christ into the world, yet before Pilate it repudiated Him; the people without a nation of their own and yet unable to live together among others. The Jewish people is still more fascinating because of its many strengths. It is to its credit as achievers that the Jewish people holds positions in governments, in international and party politics, in the direction of national economies, in the complex mechanisms of money, in the media and leisure, and in the influence over lifestyle and public opinion. For two thousand years it has applied itself with unique tenacity. And when one thinks of this people, who live in the midst of all the nations, through the most varied changes of fortune but always and everywhere intact and incorruptible —one reflects that this people’s lineage is the greatest upon earth! The Jewish people justly claims the greatest of lineages, because it has six thousand years of indestructible history. The greatest of lineages, because it was in it that Christ, the Son of the living God, took flesh. This is a people which, though a minority, is here and everywhere, as it has been for 20 centuries of Christian history. What is its origin? How and why does it continue? What is its destiny in history? What attitude should one adopt towards it? These are the questions this article hopes to explain. This article claims to be an explanation of the Jew —a theological explanation— which in this case is the only possible one. Theology is the science of the mysteries of God. These mysteries are the inscrutable judgments of the Most High which are known to us when He deigns to manifest them to us. Without these manifestations we would have no inkling of them. Catholic theology teaches that the Jewish people is the object of a very special vocation from God. Only in the light of theology can one explain the Jew. Neither merely psychology nor the biological sciences, nor even purely historical studies can explain the Jewish people. This people is a topic of universal and eternal scope which by its very nature requires a universal and eternal explanation that is valid for today, for yesterday and forever. The Jewish people must be considered by an explanation which is eternal, like God; that is to say, a theological explanation. What emerges from this explanation is not meant in any way to justify either Semitic or anti-Semitic activity. These two terms tend to trivialize a situation that is deeper and more universal. Catholic theology, while throwing light on the mystery of the Jewish people, will indicate the relations between Jews and Christians, who must live apart until the mercy of God disposes their reconciliation. The Jewish People According to Catholic Theology The Jewish people is not like the other peoples, who are born today and fade tomorrow, creating admirable civilizations limited to a point in time and space. We remember the great empires of Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Persians, the Greeks and the Romans: their glory was the glory of a day. The Jewish people, a tiny enclave at the crossroads of East and West, was made tiny for its purpose of bearing the mystery of God through the centuries. And to bear this mystery graven in its flesh it was not to create a civilization, because that is a human thing. What was necessary for it was the divine. The Jewish people is the theological people which God created for Himself. Moses tells us in Genesis how, two thousand years before Jesus Christ, the Lord God called the patriarch Abraham, living at Ur of the Chaldees, in Mesopotamia, and told him: 1. Go forth out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and out of thy father’s house, and come into the land which I shall show thee. 2. And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and magnify thy name: and thou shalt be blessed. 3. And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee; and in thee shall all the kindred of the earth be blessed (Gen. 12). So the Jewish people, the sons of Abraham, have their origin in God, because it is He who has chosen them out of the rest of mankind and it is He that promises His blessing in such a way that in them all the kindred of the earth shall be blessed. Israel, then, is great with a theological greatness. But does this greatness consist purely in its bodily descent in the flesh from Abraham, the patriarch from whose body it was formed, or does it rest on the faith Abraham had in God’s Promise of a Redeemer? This is an extremely important question. If the blessings of God are for Abraham’s bodily descendants only, then the Jewish people would be chosen and blessed among all the nations of the earth only for the fact of being sons of Abraham. But if the blessings are reserved to faith in the divine Promise, then simple descent by lineage is valueless. It is necessary to be a descendant of Abraham by faith in the Promise, that is to say, a spiritual descent based on faith. Ishmael and Isaac What, then, is the basis of Israel’s greatness in the light of God’s plan? To make it clear, God gave Abraham two sons. The one called Ishmael was by his slave-woman, Hagar, and his birth was in the ordinary course of nature. The other was given him, against all hope, by his wife Sarah in her old age, in accordance with the Promise of God. He was called Isaac. It was to Isaac and his descendants that God confirmed the Pact made with Abraham. He also bestowed a blessing on Ishmael, but a purely material one, promising to make him the head of a great people. From Ishmael descend the present Arabs, who are in such bitter opposition of the entry of Jews into Palestine. That is because Abraham was persuaded by Sarah and commanded by God to show Hagar and Ishmael the door (Gen. 21). What is signified by these two sons of Abraham? St. Paul, the great apostle of the divine mysteries, tells that two nations are prefigured in Ishmael and Isaac (Gal. 4). Ishmael, the first to be born and the natural offspring of the slave, Hagar, represents the Synagogue of the Jews, which glories in its descent from the flesh of Abraham. But Isaac, born miraculously of the sterile Sarah according to a Promise of God, represents the Church which, like Isaac, is born by faith in the Promise of Christ. So it is not lineal descent from Abraham which brings salvation, but spiritual union with Christ through faith. The Jewish people which began with Abraham will be able to attain to its salvation not by the fact of its material descent from Abraham, but in believing in Christ and assimilating itself to Him in faith. All who are united in Christ form the blessed inheritance of Abraham and the patriarchs, and are the object of God’s Promises. The Catholic Church is Sarah made fruitful by the divine power. It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh, on the other hand, is worth nothing, as Jesus Christ was to say: “It is the spirit that quickeneth: the flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I have spoken to you, are spirit and life.” (Jn. 6:64) Could it happen that this people, or a part of it —united to Abraham by bodily descent— should believe that this same genealogical link alone is what gives justification and salvation? Yes, it could happen, and it did. St. Paul comments that, to show it in advance, God so disposed that...: “...Abraham had two sons; the one by the bondwoman and the other by the free woman. But he who was of the bondwoman, was born according to the flesh: but he of the free woman was by Promise.” (Gal. 4:22,23) All this was said by way of allegory in order to signify that the simple fact of fleshly union with Abraham is represented by Ishmael, the slave’s son; and the imitation of Abraham, by faith in Jesus Christ, is represented by Isaac, the son of the Promise. And one must also make a distinction between those who are true Israelites because they imitate Abraham’s faith in God by believing in Jesus Christ (those represented by Isaac), and the Israelites who descend from Abraham in the flesh without imitating his faith (who are prefigured by Ishmael). Ishmael persecuted Isaac. St. Paul, commenting on this, adds: “But as then he that was born according to the flesh persecuted him that was after the spirit: so also it is now.” (Gal. 4:29). Here we see expressed the theological necessity by which Ishmael persecuted Isaac, the Synagogue persecutes the Catholic Church, and the Jews who are united to Abraham by only a union of the flesh persecute the Christians who are the true Israelites, united to Christ by faith. The same mystery is revealed to us by the two sons granted by the Lord for the patriarch Isaac —Esau and Jacob. Let us turn to Genesis (ch. 25): v.21: And Isaac besought the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and He heard him, and made Rebecca to conceive. v.22: But the children struggled in her womb: and she said: If it were to be so with me, what need was there to conceive? And she went to consult the Lord. v.23: And He answering said: Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be divided out of thy womb, and one people shall overcome the other, and the elder shall serve the younger. v.24: And when her time was come to be delivered, behold twins were found in her womb. v.25: He that came forth first was red, and hairy like a skin: and his name was called Esau. Immediately the other coming forth, held his brother’s foot in his hand, and therefore he was called Jacob. In his Epistle to the Romans, in which he reveals the mystery of the Jewish people, St. Paul shows how Esau, the elder according to the flesh, is the Jewish people united to Abraham by a simple blood-tie, while the younger brother Jacob is the Catholic Church (formed of Jews and Gentiles) which, because it is united by faith to Christ, is preferred above Esau. In this way were fulfilled the words of Scripture (when God reproached the Jews for their ingratitude and lack of pure sacrifice, and called the Gentiles to offer up to Him in every place an acceptable sacrifice): “I have loved you, saith the Lord: and you have said: Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau brother to Jacob, saith the Lord, and I have loved Jacob, but have hated Esau? and I have made his mountains a wilderness, and given his inheritance to the dragons of the desert.” (Mal. 1:2,3) As it is written: “Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated.” (Rom. 9:13) So it is that the Church overcomes the Synagogue, although the Synagogue, like Esau... “...always hated Jacob...and he said in his heart...I will kill my brother Jacob.” (Gen. 27:41) The Greatness of the Jewish People We have referred to these figures from among the Patriarchs as interpreted by the Catholic Church to show that at the very origins of the Jewish people there is foreshadowed both its greatness and complexity. The Jewish people has a theological lineage, chosen, consecrated, and sanctified for the purpose of identifying and bringing to us the bodily reality of our Divine Lord Jesus Christ who had to come, and whom the Gentiles expected. This is what is awe-inspiring in the Jewish people: its flesh is sanctified and marked to bring us Him “Who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.” But precisely why is this flesh holy? Why is it of Abraham’s lineage? Why must it bring to us the Christ? In other words, is it Christ who sanctifies the Jewish lineage, or the Jewish lineage that sanctifies Christ? The fact is that Christ, as Isaiah had foretold (Rom. 9:32) had been placed as a stumbling block, a stone of scandal among his people. If, with the humility of Abraham, this people believed in Christ as sanctifying their lineage, then it was called to be the root and the stem of that flourishing Olive Tree which was to be the Church of Jesus Christ, the Catholic Church. On the other hand, if it was to reject Christ, confident in its pride of race, then it destined itself to be the root and stock of a wild vine which would produce bitter fruits. In the former case, this people will be Isaac, Jacob, and Abel; in the latter, it is called to play the part of Ishmael, Esau, and Cain. But this chosen line will always take precedence over all the other races of men. If it accepts Christ, it will be the principal and best part of the Catholic Church, the root and trunk of that Olive Tree that produces fruit for eternal life, as the Apostle Paul teaches. If it rejects Christ, it will be chief in the kingdom of iniquity. The great Apostle, St. Paul, who was proud to know himself an Israelite, emphasizes the Jewish pre-eminence for good or ill when he says: “Tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Greek…” (Rom. 2:9) What advantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way. First indeed, because the words of God were committed to them (Rom. 3:1,2). The Jew then is first in the order of goodness, in the mystery of grace. The trunk of the tree that is the Catholic Church is Jewish. The Patriarchs are Jews; the Prophets are Jewish, John the Baptist is Jewish; St. Joseph is Jewish; the Mother of God is Jewish; and our Blessed Saviour in whom all nations of the earth are blessed is Jewish. The Apostles are Jewish; the Evangelists are Jewish; and the first of the Martyrs, St. Stephen, is Jewish. What a people, this theological people that is the trunk of the tree of the Church! In the presence of this Olive Tree, what worth have the Gentile peoples who are only poor wild olives? What worth has the learning of the Greeks or the power of pagan Rome? Mere foolishness, says St. Paul, because these nations did nothing to bring salvation such as the Jewish nation did. If the Gentile nations–starting with the Greeks–wish to enter the way of salvation they must do so by charity, profiting by the general rejection of Jewish people in order to be grafted in. That is why St. Paul says the fall of a part of the Jewish people has become the opportunity of salvation for the Gentiles: “And if some of the branches be broken, and thou, being a wild olive, art ingrafted in them, and art made partaker of the root, and of the fatness of the olive tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.” (Rom. 11:17,18) But Israel’s greatness, which was predestined to be in Christ, needs to be matched by a corresponding fidelity to Christ. What unhappy consequences visit this people if it repudiates the One Who is its salvation! Judas Iscariot, Annas, and Caiphas were Jewish. It was the Jewish chief priests who persuaded the people to call for the crucifixion of the Saviour and who cried out, “His blood be upon us and our children!” (Mt. 27:25) Jews stoned St. Stephen; Jews martyred St. James and laid traps for the apostles. The greatest crime of all time —the death of the God-Man— was perpetrated by this forlorn people. What is the root of the errors of the Jews? —It is that “a part of this people” believed that the promises given to the Jewish people on account of Christ (who was due to be born from among them) were made to His flesh, to His lineage. However, the Jewish people, instead of acknowledging that it was the chosen people because of Christ, rather believed that it was Christ who had something to boast about on account of His genealogical lineage. Thus, it was not Christ, but the flesh of Abraham, that was the source of glory. And the Pharisees, the veritable incarnation of this spirit of iniquity, declared proudly as a reason for not accepting Christ: “We have Abraham for our father.” So their sin consisted in making carnal (i.e., material) the promises of God. In that way they attributed substantial value to what was only a foreshadowing. They expected salvation from what was only a sign of that salvation. As for the Messiah, the One awaited, who was to bring grace and truth to the world, they made of Him a political, earthly ruler, who w… truncated (69,568 more characters in archive)