I received what I can only call an explosive comment on my use of some such phrase when I was singing the praises of our Holy Martyrs the (glorious) Maccabees.
I think the writer should consider prayerfully the opening paragraph of chapter 9 of Romans.
This heritage is the inheritance of every Christian, whether Modern Rabbinic Judaism likes the idea or not.
I am unwilling in future to give consideration to any comments which may be offered by this source.
7 comments:
Christian culture is infused with Judaism. Anti-semitism (a fixated prejudice) will devolve into anti-Christianity. Scratch an anti-Semite and you find a Nazi. After they go after Judaism, they will start on Christianity. Jesus Christ was Jewish and the Son of God. The two are theologically inseparable.
Hatred of Judaism will descend into nauseating godless Nazism.
Christian culture is infused with Judaism. Anti-semitism (a fixated prejudice) will devolve into anti-Christianity. Scratch an anti-Semite and you find a Nazi. After they go after Judaism, they will start on Christianity. Jesus Christ was Jewish and the Son of God. The two are theologically inseparable.
Hatred of Judaism will descend into nauseating godless Nazism.
The Maccabees are celebrated as "our" Holy Martyrs in the following rites of the Church:
In the Roman Breviary of St Pius V, in the second nocturn of the fifth Sunday of October, a reading from St Gregory Nazianzen commends Eleazar and the seven Maccabee brothers as “the first-fruits of those who suffered in this world before Christ".
The Byzantine rite sings a "Kontakion of the Martyrs" on August 1. It reads: "O Macchabees perfect in wisdom, you are like the Seven Pillars of God's wisdom, the Seven Candelabra of heaven. O great ones, first of the martyrs, together with all martyrs, intercede with God that He may save those who honour you".
On August 1, the traditional Ambrosian rite celebrates the Maccabees along with the feast of St Eusebius of Vercelli. The Preface of the Mass reads: "What then can we say, and with what exultation, for the fact that on the day of their passion, there passed from this world to the seat of eternity the witness of the faith and confessor of the truth Eusebius? who on that very day, on which the martyrs of the Old Law suffered, as a champion of the New Testament was also taken to heaven. The former departed observing the commandments of the Jewish law; the latter fell asleep, affirming the unity of the undivided Trinity."
There is a logical and semantic problem with the use of the word "Jewish" or using the phrase "Judaeo-Christian."
Jew, Jewish, and Judaism all mean different things to different people and even to the same people in different contexts. To many people, it seems puzzling to say that Christ was Jewish- because they use the word to describe a religion other than Christianity. Jesus was many things. He was a Jew, and of the House of David, and followed God's law, and so was an observant Jew. Jesus is all over the Old Testament, as is the Holy Ghost, and fulfilled Judaism by his life, death and resurrection. It is clear that, after Christ, there is nothing of authentic Judaism left outside the Church. Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life. There is no other option.
The modern-day group of people who describe themselves as Jews are an extremely varied group,and are impossible to categorize. Many are charming, and charitable, and are sometimes even shrewd (as they are said to be.) They do tend to be good with money, but I have seldom met one who is "cheap" (as they are also said to be.) Frankly, I miss them. They had a low birth rate, and a tendency to either marry Christians, and sometimes to convert to Catholicism without and matrimonial reason at all. They no longer populate the Bronx in their former numbers. Yet there are times when I can only express a thought with a Yiddish phrase, and I despair at finding a decent knish. Despite all of this, I have been called an anti-semite because I cannot stand Israel (another troublesome word,) and have learned the hard way that talking about Judaism is a subject that can easily get someone into serious trouble.
Exactly, Eternity - and Fr Hunwicke. One of the most powerful pieces of the legacy of Benedict XVI is his meditation delivered during his papal visit to Auschwitz:
"Deep down, those vicious criminals, by wiping out this people, wanted to kill the God who called Abraham, who spoke on Sinai and laid down principles to serve as a guide for mankind, principles that are eternally valid. If this people, by its very existence, was a witness to the God who spoke to humanity and took us to himself, then that God finally had to die and power had to belong to man alone - to those men, who thought that by force they had made themselves masters of the world. By destroying Israel, by the Shoah, they ultimately wanted to tear up the taproot of the Christian faith and to replace it with a faith of their own invention: faith in the rule of man, the rule of the powerful."
You can read the full text here:
https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/may/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060528_auschwitz-birkenau.html
It's ironic that the Maccabees are found in the Catholic Bible, but are absent from the Jewish and Protestant Bibles.
41 years ago, I was working on a kibbutz near Acre. In December, as Hanukkah drew near, a kibbutznik told us foreign volunteers the story of the Maccabees: Epiphanes, the desecration of the Temple, the persecutions, the rebellion, the Rededication of the Temple and the miracle of the oil. I was fascinated: I had never heard of the Maccabees, having read only the Protestant canon of Scripture.
There was a competition to make a nine-branched menorah. I am no carpenter but I felt inspired. I found some old pieces of timber. I started with a piece of four by two about a yard long, and made a support for it using three pieces of 4 by 1, each about 10 inches high, the two outer pieces set parallel to the plank, and the inner one at right angles. These rested on a base, a four by two plank about two feet long, held off the ground on a couple of blocks.
We then affixed nine empty bottles to the top plank in a symmetrical array, inserted candles and stood back to admire our handiwork.
"It's not disrespectful, is it?" we anxiously asked each other, surveying the empty wine and beer bottles sitting atop the scrap wood. We didn't want to come across as Goys dissing a sacred symbol of Judaism and Jewish culture.
Nevertheless, we carried our effort to the exhibition room. "Yofeh!" exclaimed a kibbutznik as we passed. "Beautiful!" That encouraged us.
In the exhibition room we could see that others had deconstructed and reimagined the menorah in startling and radical ways. One effort with glass and rubber tubing was scarcely recognizable as a menorah and certainly not usable as one. In comparison the Gentile contribution was safe, conservative and traditional.
After the exhibition we retrieved our menorah, and would light a couple of candles each evening, as we sat and talked. And those are my associations with the Maccabees.
Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ,God in the flesh,was an Israelite. The ancient Israelite religion was the first phase of the One True Faith and,has much in common with traditional Catholicism.. Read the book of Saint Malachi,it is unmistakable the Old Testament Saints were Catholics and,the Israelite religion was predicted to change once our Saivor was born,all throughout the O.T.
Modern day Judaism began in 130 and is a completely different religion as opposed to the ancient Israelites,who are our elder Catholic Bros Sisters and Saints.
Post a Comment