A ReprintA little more than two years ago, there was some furor in Catholic news circles about the claims of some bishops that "the Jews have their own covenant, they don't need to convert to the Catholic Church."
This shocking statement, in its various forms, must be making the Brothers Lemann laugh at the stupidity, or weep at the consequences. They were twins, born into a Jewish family in the later 1800's, and later converted to the Catholic Faith- finally, becoming priests and evangelists to the Jews. In fact, during Vatican I, they were trying very hard to have a document approved by that council which dealt with the desire and purpose of conversion to the Catholic Faith for the Jews. It is with irony that we look back at the statement made at the time that Vatican I was interrupted by WWI- "It is with great hope that the document prepared by the Frs. Lemann will indeed be approved by the council when it is again convened." When the Vatican Council was recovened, the world was shuddering under imminent social and moral revolutions, and the Vatican Council would become the least likely forum in which a document by the Frs. Lemann, advocating evangelization of the Jews, would receive approbation.
True, it would be very interesting to see how the Frs. Lemann might deal with the Jewish question of conversion after the horrors of both WWII and the revolutions that destroyed the entire fabric of societies- and possibly dragging the Church's worldly understanding of Herself and Her role into the smoke of the ruins. However, the passion of the Apostles, notably St. Paul, all the way down to the twin priests, the driving desire to help their brethren in blood to see the reality of the Messiah in the person of Jesus, is the same. No amount of historical events, as terrifying as they may be, could possibly account for the Jewish-convert bishop in Israel, who stated sometime in 2004 that conversion of the Jews was not necessary. This is not an organic change of thinking, it is not on the same spectrum, it is a radical departure. What is the rationale?
In my last post, I discussed the Covenants of Salt- one with the priests in the desert during the Exodus, and later with David. These covenants, because of the nature of the 'salt-covenant', are kept forever. Therefore because the Jews consider these to be proof that although God may punish them for millennia, He will never completely reject them. The idea of there being a New Covenant, or New Testament, which supersedes the Old, including the Covenants of Salt, is completely foreign and blasphemous to the Jews. And since the horrors of WWII, including the Jewish Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the growth of Jewish power in media, politics and culture the world over, the question of Catholic evangelization to the Jews has become a hot-point for controversy and charges of intolerance, "old-time Catholic imperialism". "Anti-Semitism". The stance of the Frs. Lemann, or Fr. Fahey, that of the passion to convert everyone, but especially the Jews since they are the nation out of which the Lord came, is simply against the current of mainstream Catholic thinking since Vatican II. Opening wide the doors and windows to the world does not mesh with sending out the calvary to convert the Jews.
It is quite possibly and probably true that the Covenants of Salt are indeed forever: yet they were made between God and the Jews- He does not change, He does not break faith. That same God came to Moses in the desert as one friend to another, to David as a loving and disciplining Father, and then He came to the Jews through the immaculate womb of a simple Jewish girl, as was promised and foretold for hundreds of years. He came as a bringer and omniscient interpreter of the Law, and as the heir of David's kingdom. Indeed He came and at the same time, fulfilled both Covenants of Salt. But the Jews rejected Him. Yet the salt remains, neither could retrieve the salt from the other's pouch, and so even in an attempt to reject Him and thus break the Covenants, the salt says: "No, you cannot break this covenant. It is forever."
Does this mean, then, that the Jews have their own covenants with the Lord, and that they will be saved regardless of our converting them? It is true that St. Paul tells the Christians in Rome, "I say then..Hath God cast away His people? God forbid, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin... God has not cast away His people, which He foreknew ...I say then, have they so stumbled that they should fall? God forbid. But by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that they may be emulous of them. Now if the offence of them be the riches of the world... that blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in. And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written...For the gift and calling of God are without repentance. For as you also in times past did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy, through their unbelief; so these also now have not believed, for your mercy, that they also may obtain mercy"(Romans XI).
We do not know what is in God's mind concerning the Jews. But He is the same God as did die on the cross at the hands of His own, and they will know Him as the Messiah with certainty someday. So why would we not be called, as always, to convert them to the God to Whom they will most certainly recognize before the end of the world? And I think it is of course no accident that Our Lord said, "You are the salt of the earth, if this salt loses its flavor, it is of no use but to be thrown in the fire."
The salt of the earth. The mineral that keeps the heart beating, that preserves, that purifies, so precious and so necessary to life. It was salt that enabled the ancient Hebrews to stop being a nomadic people, a people moving along with and depending upon the herds for sustenance, for salt is necessary to the body for life. Meat carries its own salt; but with the possession of the mineral, the nomadic Hebrews were able to settle and provide their own salt, seasoning foods grown in the fields.
We, the ragged beggars hauled from the streets to the banquet of the King because His own people would not come, we are the salt for the world, and I think, for the Jews. We are, as St. Paul says, "to make (the Jews) emulous"- of the salvation given us by the King of the Universe. We are the intermingled grains of the Salt Covenants, grains provided by God, which cannot be recovered, because we are spread out throughout the earth, and therefore, we are in some way the keepers of the Covenants: we are the grains of salt, not inert, but alive and with the flavour of passion for Our Lord, the Messiah.
If we lose that flavour, that passion to have all know Him as their Saviour, if we opt out of our calling to preach to all nations, that desire and thirst for souls, Jew and Gentile alike ( "In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile"), then we have lost our flavour as salt and are fit for naught than the fire. We must evangelize in season and out of season, in times of ease and times of persecution. Woe to those shepherds who not only lose their flavor, but discourage others from evangelization.
