Christ, the 'Glory of Israel'
A Chapter from The Mystery of Christmas by Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa
The words of the Nunc
Dimittis,
as well as throwing light on the present problem of the relationship
between the Church and non-Christian religions, also throws light on
the problem of the relationship between the Church and the people of
Israel, between Christians and Hebrews. If Christ is ‘the glory of his
people, Israel’, we Christians must do all we can, first of all to
acknowledge this ourselves and then to remove the obstacles that
prevent Israel from acknowledging it. The first and most important
obstacle to be removed is what St. Paul called ‘hostility’, ‘the
dividing wall’ built on mutual incomprehension, diffidence and
resentment, a wall that Jesus knocked down by his death on the cross
(cf. Ep 2:14ff), but which must still be knocked down in deed,
especially after all that has taken place in the last twenty centuries
since Christ’s resurrection. St. Paul teaches us that the best way to a
reconciliation between Israel and the Church is through love and
esteem: ‘I am speaking the truth in Christ,’ he wrote to the Romans, ‘I
am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I
have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish
that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ’ (Paul separated
from Christ!) ‘for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen by race. They
are Israelites and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the
covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises; to them
belong the Patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is
the Christ’ (Rm 9:1-5).
This was my own
experience some years ago during my second pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
The first thing I realized while still on the way there was that, as a
Christian, I could not remain prisoner of the political judgements the
world was passing on Israel in the atmosphere of attacks and reprisal
which had started after the Israelites had conquered Arab territory but
that I was obliged to love this people because ‘of their race,
according to the flesh, is the Christ’. I should love them as Jesus,
Mary, the Apostles and the whole of the primitive Church that came from
the Jews did. It was a question of a kind of conversion to Israel that
I had never experienced before then and, like all conversions, it
exacted a change of mentality and heart.
They,
the Jews, are of the same blood as Jesus and it has been written that
‘no man ever hates his own flesh’ (cf. Ep 5:29). Jesus, who is a man
like us even if he is God, is pleased if we Christians love one another
and make excuses for his people even if they have not accepted him up
to now. It often happened to me in my priestly ministry to get to know
young boys and girls who were rejected and often even ill-treated by
their parents for consecrating themselves to God and I saw the joy they
experienced when I spoke well of their parents and tried to excuse
them. They were happier than if I had said they themselves were
completely right and had spoken about the injustice of their families.
In the case of Jesus this is a consequence and a nuance of his real
Incarnation which we must respect almost with modesty, just as we
respect a family tragedy of a friend, mentioning it with discretion and
sorrow. Israel is the first-born of God: ‘When Israel was a child, God
loved him’ (cf. Hos 11:1) and we know that his love is ‘eternal’ (Jer
31:3).
Christians must love Israel not
only in memory but also in hope;
not only for what it was but for what it will be. Their ‘fall’, says
the Apostle, ‘is not forever’ and God ‘has the power to graft them in
again’ (cf. Rm 11:11-23). If their rejection means the reconciliation
of the world, the Apostle continues, what will their acceptance be but
life from the dead? Cf. Rm 11:15). Simeon said that Jesus was ‘for the
fall and resurrection of many in Israel’ (Lk 2:34), which could be
understood as: for the fall of some and the resurrection of others
but also, as the Apostle meant: first for the fall
and then
for the resurrection of Israel. From the point of view of the Christian
faith, all these centuries have been an extension of the wait, like a
long detour in history, which we do not know how much longer is going
to last, to arrive at when Jesus will again pass before Israel who will
be able to say, as it is written: ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name
of the Lord’ (cf. Lk 13:35).
On that
journey these thoughts unexpectedly gave rise to the certainty in me
that the Church is responsible for Israel! It is responsible in a
unique way, differently from how it is to all other people. The Church
alone guards in her heart and keeps alive God’s project for Israel.
This responsibility of faith requires the Church to love the Jews, to
wait for them, to ask, as it already does, their pardon for having in certain
times hidden the true Jesus from them, that Jesus who loves them and
who is their ‘glory’; that Jesus who taught us to let ourselves be
scorned and killed rather than scorn and kill others. If the delay has
been so long and painful, it has also undoubtedly been so through the
fault of Christians. In this light we can understand the new signs we
are experiencing in the Church, such as the constitution Nostra
Aetate
of Vatican Council II, the Pope’s visit to the Jewish synagogue in
Rome, where he addressed the Jews as ‘elder brothers’, and, finally,
the norms emanated by Rome to eliminate from the Christian catechism
and preaching all those elements and ways of expression that could
offend the sensitivity of the Jews and that are not required or
justified by faithfulness to the Word of God.
Together
with this responsibility which is relative to the past, there is
another that concerns the present situation of Israel as a people and a
state. Human and political judgements can be made on this present
situation, as can judgements of theology and faith. Political judgement
is that expressed by heads of States and which the U.N. also expressed
in its turn. There is a whole area of different and opposing opinions
open here, because all political thought, including that of Israel in
the Old Testament, is in itself ambiguous, mixed with man’s sin even
when God makes use of it for his plans of salvation, as happened in the
Old Testament. The unresolved problem of the Palestinians driven out of
their land makes these political judgements more of a condemnation of
Israel than of approval. But, as I have already mentioned, Christians
cannot stop at these political or diplomatic judgements. There is a
theological or historical saving dimension of the problem which only
the Church can feel. We share with the Jews the biblical certainty that
God gave them the country of Canaan forever (cf. Gn 17:8; Is 43:5; Jer
32:22; Ezk 36:24; Am 9:14). We know, on the other hand, that ‘the gifts
and the call of God are irrevocable’ (Rm 11:29).
In
other words we know that God gave Israel the land but there is no
mention of his taking it back again forever. Can we Christians exclude
that what is happening in our day, that is, the return of Israel to the
land of its fathers, is not connected in some way, still a mystery to
us, to this providential order which concerns the chosen people and
which is carried out even through human error and excess as happens in
the Church itself? If Israel is to enter the New Covenant one day, St.
Paul tells us that they will not do so a few at a time but as an entire
nation, as ever-living ‘roots’. But if Israel is to enter as a nation,
it must be a nation, it must have a land of its own, an organization
and a voice in the midst of other nations of the earth. The fact that
Israel has remained an ethnic unity throughout the centuries and
throughout many historical upheavals is, in itself, a sign of a destiny
that has not been interrupted but is waiting to be fulfilled. Many
peoples have been driven out of their land over the centuries, but not
one of them has been able to remain intact as a people in their new
situation. Faced with this fact, we cannot but remember the words of
God in Jeremiah: ‘If this fixed order departs from before me,’ (the
order that governs the sun, the moon, the stars and the seas!) ‘says
the Lord, then shall the descendants of Israel cease from being a
nation before me forever’ (Jer 31:36). Even the huge cross that Israel
carried on its shoulders is a sign that God is preparing a
‘resurrection’ for it, just as he did for his Son who represented
Israel. The Jews themselves are not able to completely grasp this sign
in their history because they have not completely accepted the idea
that the Messiah ‘should suffer these things and enter into his glory’
(Lk 24:26), but we Christians must grasp it. When Edith Stein saw the
tragedy that the Nazis were preparing for her people looming up, she
recollected herself in prayer one day in the chapel and afterwards
wrote: ‘There, beneath the cross, I understood the destiny of God’s
people. I thought that those who know that this is the cross of Christ
are in duty bound to take it upon themselves in the name of all the
others.’ And she in fact took it upon herself, in the name of all the
others.
The Church must therefore keep
watch over these signs as Mary kept the words in her heart and
meditated on them (cf. Lk 2:19). The Church cannot go back and take on
the features of the old Israel with
its strong bond between race, land and faith. The new salvation has
been prepared ‘for all peoples’. What is required is that the Israel
according to the flesh enter into and become part of the Israel
according to the Spirit, without for this having to cease being Israel
also according to the flesh which is its only prerogative. Thus St.
Paul together with all those who have passed from the old to the new
covenant can say: ‘Are they Hebrews? So am I! Are they Israelites? So
am I! Are they descendants of Abraham? So am I!’ The Apostle even says:
‘I am a better one’ (cf. 2 Co 11:22ff) and he was right, at least
according to the Christian faith, because only in Christ is the destiny
of the Hebrew people fulfilled and its greatness discovered. We are not
saying this in a spirit of proselytism but in a spirit of conversion
and obedience to the Word of God because it is certain that the
rejoining of Israel with the Church will involve a rearrangement in the
Church; it will mean a conversion on both sides. It will also be a
rejoining of the Church with Israel.
The
reconstitution of the Jewish nation is a wonderful sign and opportunity
for the Church itself, the importance of which we are not yet able to
grasp. Only now can Israel take up again the question of Jesus of
Nazareth and, to a certain degree, small but significant, this is what
is happening. Quite a few in the Jewish religion have started to
acknowledge Jesus as ‘the glory of Israel’. They openly acknowledge
Jesus as the Messiah and call themselves ‘Messianic’ Jews, which is
like saying ‘Christians’ in the original language, without bothering
about the Greek translation. These help us to overcome certain gloomy
prospects of ours, ‘making us realize that the great original schism
afflicting the Church and impoverishing it is not so much the schism
between East and West or between Catholics and Protestants, as the more
radical one between the Church and Israel.
Sometimes
in the New Testament, especially after the Resurrection, the turning to
the Gentiles is spoken of as being a consequence of Israel’s rejection:
‘Since you thrust it from you, and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal
life, behold we turn to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us,
saying, “I have set you to be a light for the Gentiles”’. (Ac 13:46ff).
But in the Nunc Dimittis at the beginning of the Gospel, the question
is dealt with instead according to God’s original and marvellous plan
in terms of harmony and mutual edification which has not yet been
compromised. The fact that Christ is ‘a light for the Gentiles’ is not
seen as a punishment for Israel but as its ‘glory’. How lovely it is,
in the Christmas context, to put this original view of things back into
the centre of the Church’s attention because, in the end, this will be
fulfilled as nothing and no one can prevent God’s plan from being
accomplished in the time established by him. One day Christ will also
be, in deed, both ‘a light for the Gentiles and the glory of his people
Israel’, as he already is by right! Simeon’s was not just a wish but a
prophecy.
|
