In the year or so since writing about salt and the Jews, I have had some thinking moments-on this subject. I recently read an article asking the question, “Who are the Jews?”- and this brought me to read Romans, and also gave me a new focus in my reading of The Life of Christ by Ven. Catherine Emmerich.
Who are the Jews, who are they with whom the Covenant of Salt was made? Are they the occupants of Israel, the somber families in black clothing in the Bronx? I suppose the very questions reveal some new confusion in my mind; but a very big clue tugged at me in my reading about the meeting of Our Lord and Nathanael. “Ah”, said Jesus, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile.”
I noticed here a few things. Jesus does not call him ‘Jew” or ‘Hebrew’ or ‘Semite’, all of which would have fit him. He chooses ‘Israelite’. St. Paul, in Romans, uses this term as well, and on an overview look, seems to make a differentiation by the use of the different terms. Both Our Lord and St. Paul seem to speak of ‘Israelite’ and ‘true’ as being connected.
It is said that Heber, the father of the Hebrews, was given a language that was different from all others, to make his descendents better able to live apart from other families, or races. Six generations later, Abraham was born into his line and Abraham’s faith became the stuff of future nations. Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, became Israel, the father and personification of ‘isra-el’, or he who struggles with God. It is true; he fathered a nation who struggled with God, like a child struggles to be born. In the providence of God, the connection between Himself and mankind was a national, racial one, although it seems that even at the early stages, people were grafted in, like Joseph’s wife.
This nation, in the desert, struggled with God and despite their weaknesses and betrayals, was allowed to receive the law, the first step in regeneration for all of us. They struggled with God and were sent into captivities. What were they at the time of Christ, at the time of St. Paul? Were there any left to hold God’s grains of salt?
Jesus rejoices in Nathanael as a true Israelite. He recognizes one who struggles with God, without guile: struggling can have two meanings, and the fullness of the saying is apparent in both meanings for a true Israelite. They struggle in the sense of allowing themselves to be yoked with God for truth and salvation, and in failures they fight with God and later plead from Him His forgiveness. Yet in all this struggle, they are without guile, or cunning and deceitfulness.
One can also see who the true Israelite is, inheritor of God’s promises, that Jesus is showing us- by whom he denounces as false. Although they call themselves Jews and Israelites and worship in the Temple and teach in the synagogue, although they claim to interpret the religion for the people, many of the Pharisees are full of guile, full of their own interpretations, full of their heritage and race- they reject God in person, instead of truly struggling. In reading Holy Scripture and books of the life of Christ, like Fulton Sheen’s or Ven. Catherine Emmerich’s, one can begin to put together a picture of what Christ was looking for. The leaders of a town, usually the Doctors of the Law or the Pharisees, would invite Him to a feast and He would say, “I have other hunger” and would go out to find those who were waiting for Him. Often this was the poor and the sick, but also included some wealthy people.
He looked for those who, as St. Paul says in Romans, were circumcised primarily in the heart: that is, the sign of salvation was in the disposition of the heart. He went among the Jews first, looking for “true Israelites in whom there is no guile” and to try to convert those whose hearts were hard; but of course, He knew where it was useless and where there was hope. At the end of His mission to the Jews, He begins to speak more openly of Himself as the Temple, a Temple that would be destroyed and rebuilt: Ven. Catherine Emmerich has a vision in which He says to the Pharisees of one town, “You are destroying the Temple, stone by stone, you are tearing it down with your own hands”; and she was given to understand that He was speaking mystically of the destruction of the particularly Jewish claim to salvation, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Crucifixion of God they brought about most directly.
Thus, in Romans, St. Paul speaks of the Israelite of the circumcised heart, the true Israelites. He is following on Christ’s words and example and on his own deep experience both as a Pharisaical Jew and as a true Israelite, who came to belief in his Savior God. He speaks of those Israelites who have been made jealous by the salvation of the Gentiles, those who God will come to save in the end: he says, “And all Israel will be saved.” There is much worth pondering here, because in the present age, where are the Israelites? It is not by color or pedigree necessarily: it is by the heart. This only God can truly see, only He knows where the salt will draw out the impurities before the end- that is, where the Church will be able to reach among those who call themselves Israelites. It is not for us to know now, and so we must reach out to all and call, “Come and see! I have found the Messiah!”
Resting on the stupid idea that the “Jews have their own covenant and we shouldn’t offend them by evangelizing” is failing the true Israelites.
