By RAYMOND DE SOUZA, KM
Part 14
Judaism, the religion established in a formal way by Moses from Mount Sinai, was the only religion in the ancient world that was based upon divine Revelation. All the other religions were founded by men and influenced by devils to a greater or lesser degree, as the Holy Spirit Himself inspired David to say: “For all the gods of the Gentiles are devils” (Psalm 95:5). Judaism, therefore, was the great exception in the old world, a religion inspired by God Himself to prepare the world to receive the Messias.
Were they always faithful to their great call? No, they were not. They were not content with having a purely spiritual God — they envied the pagans around them, who had idols. And time and again they got involved in idolatry, especially in Egypt. They just couldn’t do without a little idol to worship in hiding at home! That is why God our Lord was so strong against idolatry in the Old Testament. But He encouraged the making of statues representing angels and other creatures that were placed in the Temple of Solomon. The Ark of the Covenant, the most sacred object in all creation, has two statues of angels on its lid.
At Mount Sinai, the Hebrews made an idol — the (in)famous golden calf — and paid dearly for their idolatry: Only the sons of Aaron were priests, and only the Levites were allowed to serve in the Temple. All the males of all the other eleven tribes were forever excluded from the priesthood.
But fortunately they abandoned their idolatry once and for all during their exile in Babylon. Over half a century of slavery cured them from their idolatrous mania. So, in Jesus’ time there was not a real problem with idolatry. There was a problem with hypocrisy (Pharisees) and wealth-worship (Sadducees). But Judaism was still God’s religion, and our Lord Jesus Christ was, in His human generation, a true blue Jew, faithful to all of Moses’ teachings and traditions. From His infancy to His death He practiced the Jewish religion, paid the taxes, worshipped in the Temple, celebrated the festivities, everything!
Yes, Judaism was what it claimed to be: God’s way to bring salvation to mankind, as Jesus Himself stated, “Salvation comes from the Jews” (John 4:22).
And it did come. He was their salvation, as even His name states it: Jesus means “Savior,” and through the Jews salvation would be spread throughout the world. But — and there is often a tragic “but” — “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him” (John 1:11). We, the children of the Gentiles, did receive Him. But this is another topic for later articles.
The books written by the Hebrew prophets are acknowledged by the Catholic Church as divinely inspired, and they prophesied the Messias in incredible detail, as we have seen before. But the Jews of Jesus’ time wanted their own kind of Messias. They had given themselves to all sorts of moral and doctrinal corruption. Jesus Himself called them “an evil and adulterous generation” (Matt. 16:4; Mark 8:38).
Flavius Josephus, the famous Jewish historian of the first century, who was contemporaneous with the destruction of the Temple, wrote that if the Romans had not punished the Jews, a flood, an earthquake, or the fires of Sodom would have overwhelmed them. Yes, they had become bad news.
They did not like the idea that Gentiles were also called into the kingdom: After all, only they were God’s chosen people, destined to rule the world when the Messias would come like a new Judas Maccabeus, sending the Romans back to Rome and standing tall over all nations. And they — especially the Pharisees — hated Christ, because He did not preach as they preached. The Sadducees did not worship the golden calf; they worshipped the gold of the calf. They ruled the Temple, disliked the Pharisees and the other sects (Herodians, zealots, publicans), but united with them to shout, “Crucify Him!”
It is impressive how history repeats itself: The Jewish sects held different creeds and moral codes, but agreed to condemn Jesus. Today all non-Catholic religions who claim to be Christian disagree among themselves in creeds and moral codes, but all agree to say that the Catholic Church is wrong. What was said about Jesus in the past is said about His Church today. But I digress.
The historical fact is that they refused their own Messias. And their God, the only true God, punished them for it. Their Temple was destroyed, the records of the priests were destroyed, the Ark had already been lost, the tribes intermarried, so that nobody knew who was a Levite to minister at the new Temple or who descended from Abraham to be able to fulfill the Law of Moses and offer the daily sacrifices….The Jewish race was dispersed among the nations. In short, they lost their Covenant with God.
The news of a new Temple being built in Jerusalem should not surprise us. It will be a monument to the Old Covenant, but not the real thing, and for two simple reasons: It is not in the right place (the Mosque of the Rock occupies the right place today).
A Child Of The Church
Over the centuries, Catholic congregations of priests and nuns have been established to pray and work for the conversion of the Jews, our ancestors in the faith. A true Catholic can never be an anti-Semite, we would be anti- our own selves, as Pius XI declared once, “Spiritually, we are all Semites.”
Many great converts from Judaism have adorned the Catholic Church with outstanding examples of faith and fidelity to the purpose of their nation, namely, to be the cradle for the Messias.
Edith Stein was a German-Jewish philosopher, a canonized saint who died at Auschwitz. In April 1933 she wrote a letter to Pope Pius XI, saying in part: “As a child of the Jewish people who, by the grace of God, for the past eleven years has also been a child of the Catholic Church.”
Next article: Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Zealots, Essenes, and the Jewish sects in more detail.
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(Raymond de Souza is an EWTN program host; regional coordinator for Portuguese-speaking countries for Human Life International [HLI]; president of the Sacred Heart Institute, and a member of the Sovereign, Military, and Hospitaller Order of the Knights of Malta. His website is: www. RaymonddeSouza.com.)
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