The Jew in the Mystery of History
(Continued)
By Father Julio Meinvielle
Translated fim the Spanish by Roberto Hope
Chapter IV
The Jews and the Mystery of History and Eschatology
Of what we have said so far emerges the exceptional importance that the Jewish people have in humankind. It is a people who accompanies humankind in the entire historical process. There have been peoples that have become unique in one place in the world, or if they have been unique in the entire world they have been so for a brief time only. This is how the great empires of antiquity and even the modern ones such as Spain, France or England have been. The Jewish people, in contrast, have been active throughout the entire process of history. This is for us to clarify now, making first a consideration of a theological sort on the march of history.
The Two Histories in a Single History
The historical plot is a complex and heterogeneous mesh of diverse actions performed by different protagonists for very varied motives. Man occupies the central point in this plot. If humankind had not existed, meaning a sensitive, intelligent being, there would have been no history. At least history, as the exposition of events of intelligent beings the actions of which unfold in an evolving process. Man, of multiple dimensions, touches on the highest and the lowest of creation in a way that his actions involve the entire universe. But above man, there is a particularly unique protagonist who assumes the initiative of all that is good found in this plot. If the teaching of the Apostle (James 1, 17) is ever true, that every gift and every perfect endowment comes from above, it is uniquely so in history. Because history is a mesh of very unique and unforeseeable events which can be written only by Him who dominates the course of events. If, should it be possible, the creatures, as principal authors, were the ones who wrote it, the outline would become so tangled and confusing that the mere progress of the historical process would become impossible.
History begins with creation. And in creation, God is the one who takes the initiative. At the beginning, God created heaven and earth (Gen 1,11). And God keeps on acting on humankind to dispense the good He had made at the beginning. And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. Divine interventions become more urgent and indispensable in the measure that man, with his actions, disarrays the plan imposed by God on all things. And it is always admirable the way God gives direction and sense to the nonsensical actions of men. The Apostle cannot cease his admiration precisely upon contemplating the divine wisdom that has laid out an inscrutable sense to the historical process: O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God! How incomprehensible are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways!
If God has the initiative in what is good, creatures have it in what is evil. And in the case of history, it is man who, by a suggestion of the devil, assumes responsibility for evil. Genesis shows us how the first human couple fulfills this task.
In history, then, there are visible and invisible protagonists. In it act individuals, peoples, civilizations, and religions. Behind all historical events is, definitely, man with all his endless virtualities. There are other forces of nature acting, including the influence of the heavenly bodies. But also the angels act, the demons, and above all, with ineffable transcendence, God.
If we look at the matter from a purely human viewpoint, we would think of discovering two histories. One written by God with His special intervention on human matters, and another written by man.
A history, shall we say, holy, and a profane one. The holy history, constituted by divine intervention on human things, in the special task of fulfilling the plan that the divine design has laid out. There is, then, a mysterious action of God Himself, which begins with creation, keeps on dispensing graces to the elected and arranging the course of human events toward such dispensation of graces. And Christ, the maximal grace, is the center of such dispensation. Christ in the mystery of His resurrection, victorious over sin and death. Some graces and some interventions prepare the fulfillment of this central event, others carry it out in time, others, finally, pass it over, “traditio”, to successive human generations for the erection of the Body of Christ until we all meet into the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ (Eph 4, 12, 13). Holy history is, definitely, the history of Christ and of the Church, His Mystical Body.
There is another history, a profane history that man writes stamping his track in all corners of the earth. This is the history of the diverse civilizations that have come one after another in their predominance over human events. Although the will of man seems to prevail here, a great dose of necessitude, of fatality, ‘fatum’, can nevertheless be noticed, in which the way how the providential divine action conditions and directs the course of human events toward ends whose knowledge it reserves for itself, may be envisaged.
This is because there is actually not but a single history, the one God writes with the concurrence of all creatures. This history is a grandiose drama with its beginning, its crisis, its plot, its climax, and its dénouement. The august Trinity starts the scenic development with the work of creation. The intelligent creature, gratuitously created by God, puts with his sin the primitive divine plan in disarray, sowing disorder where God had put order. God takes advantage of the fault and disorder of man to carry out a more admirable plan of reparation, in which His justice and His divine mercy will shine. Resurrected Christ is the masterpiece of this plan. And with Christ, His chosen ones. When the Body of Christ achieves its plenitude, history shall have ended.
It is that history, that which men carry out, the profane one, the one constituted by the weft of human passions in a mad desire to possess the earth, is nothing more than secondary support in which God writes His great history, His single history. Because God, who inhabits the fullness of eternity without feeling any kind of need, by the freest act of His goodness has willed to communicate Himself mysteriously to the creatures in a more and more perfect degree, and has fulfilled in time, in irreversible and singular acts ‒ hapax ‒, as an event of the ineffable Trinitarian life. The Son of Man, in becoming man, introduces man, and with man all the creation, in the bosom of God Himself. All of history, with its noisy events, is ordered toward Christ with his chosen ones entering the bosom of the deity itself.
This is why the Scriptures have said two words that are the key to history. Saint Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians (3, 20-23): The Lord knows how vain the thoughts of the wise are. Let no one, therefore, glorify in man, for all things are yours, whether it be Paul, or Apollo, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; for all are yours and you are Christ's; and Christ is God's. The Apostle here says that nobody should glory himself of anything that is inferior to him but only of what is superior to him because as Psalm 8 teaches: You put everything under his feet. Now, below each faithful are, in the first place, the ministers of Christ, be it Paul who sowed, Apollo who watered, Peter who holds the universal rule of the sheep of Christ, as per the second letter to the Corinthians (4:5) for ourselves are your servants through Jesus. This means that the religious order and, consequently, a good portion of Holy history is at the service of those predestined. In the second place, “the world” is also below each faithful and serves him in what satisfies his needs or helps him in the knowledge of the divine according to that in Wisdom 13:5: For the beauty and greatness of the creature. In the third place, be it life, be it death, meaning all the good and all the evils of this world, since by the goods life is preserved and by the evils death is reached. In the fourth place, be it the present, be it the forthcoming, because with that we help ourselves to gain merits, and this is reserved to us for the prize according to that which says We do not have a permanent city here (Hebrews 13, 14).
This way there are three orderings in history. The first one is of the things of Christ to the faithful for all are yours. The second, those of Christ’s faithful toward Christ You are of Christ. The third one, that of Christ, as man, toward God, And Christ is of God. In these three orderings is enclosed the entire drama of history, of the single history, in which the totality of creatures move to carry out and fulfill the divine plan. That is why the teaching of Saint Thomas, who has seen that history, constituted by the movements of men and of other creatures, does not have ‒ just as no movement has ‒ a purpose in itself, but outside itself, is so profound. Through movement, he says in De Potentia Dei 3, 10 ad 4 and 4, with which God moves creatures, some other thing lying outside the movement itself is sought and intended, to wit the number of the elected which, once completed, the movement will cease, though not the substance of the movement.
It would remain to be explained how the human events which appear to move almost exclusively by the designs of men in opposition to the divine designs, can definitely be ordered to the very exact fulfillment of the divine designs. Saint Paul, echoing some words of Job, 5, gives us the explanation in this mysterious way: For it is written ‒ he says ‒ God will catch the wise in their own craftiness. And Saint Thomas comments: God will catch the wise in their own craftiness precisely because they scheme craftily against God; He places obstacles to their designs and they comply with what He proposes, in the same way, that for the malice of Joseph’s brothers, who wanted to prevent his princeship, Joseph, having been sold to Egypt, would attain power by divine ordering.
Of the Movements that Propel Human Profane History
That God should guide all events of humankind in accordance with a very special and mysterious way for the edification of the Body of Christ, does not prevent, but on the contrary, requires that all events unfold also from purely human causes. This way, profane history ‒ what Saint Augustine calls earthly city ‒ has its proper substance and rhythm, different when not divergent from those of the City of God. The holy Books relate that Cain, after having had his son Enoch, set himself to build a city to which he gave the name of his son, Enoch; it also narrates that, of the descendants of Cain, Tubalcain ‒ the first metallurgist ‒ was the forger of cutting instruments made of iron and bronze. After the deluge, they show us men concentrating their efforts on an exclusively civilizing task, in the building of the city of Babel, until the lord, with the confusion of tongues, dispersed them over the face of the earth.
The Holy books do not concern themselves with the profane history thereafter, but instead, with the narration about Abraham, get into properly said holy history, and deal with it almost exclusively up to Revelation. It would look like God leaving the city of man to its own devices. The city of man has nothing to do with that of God, at least directly. Its life unfolds in a movement, a dialectics of its own. Something more could even be thought, and this is that the structure and the dynamics of civilizations and of the profane life of men fall under the dominion of the ‘prince of this world.’ Not because they should be evil in themselves, but because the latter took possession of them by man yielding to his seduction. True, Christ engaged in combat against the devil in the three temptations and defeated him definitely on the Cross, but on a different field and with different weapons. On the field of holy history and with specifically holy weapons.
Hence that profane history should move under a high domination of the prince of this world. Saint John seems to indicate the great laws of the dialectics of civilizations. Dialectics of the will to power through the domination of some peoples by other peoples; dialectics of the enrichment without limits with the correlated misery and subjection of the weaker ‒ concupiscence of the eyes; dialectics of jealousy and sexual rivalry ‒ concupiscence of the flesh. This is why Saint John counterposes holy history against profane history. We know we are of God, while the world is entirely under the malign (1 Letter 2, 16)
Saint Paul shows, likewise, the contraposition of the dialectics of the world, in which there is a rivalry between the Jew and the Greek ‒ struggles for political domination; of master and slave ‒ struggles for economic domination; of male and female ‒ struggle for carnal satisfaction; to the city of God in which all are one in Jesus Christ.
The great passions of the men who study, analyze, and combat the Sacred Books are the historical movement of civilizations. The cosmos advances toward a global unification under the fierce power of the strongest. Toynbee has well seen how civilization declines in a humankind that advances in the race to develop ever more powerful weapons. An empire follows another empire, a civilization another civilization. But if the will of the strongest has the force of law, the profane substance of history is amassed in the injustice and advances toward degradation, and from here to barbarity. Because of this, when a civilization has been getting stronger by devouring the preceding one that had gone into decadence, emerges for a moment in an explosion of drive, but then declines immediately to enter a chronic state of barbarity, or die. If we pay attention to the very substance of what they are made of, this is the law that rules civilizations. Law of birth and death, proper to all natural bodies. In this plane of the profane substance of history, Spengler’s thesis appears to be definitive.
But the only error of Spengler’s is to think that the profane history of the peoples should be the only history. It may perhaps be the only one that men can write. In that same history written by men, urged by the dialectics of the triple concupiscence, God writes another history, the true history, the definitive history.
But, if it is true that the profane order of history does not directly aid in the true history that God writes in the building of the Body of His only-begotten Son, it is also certain that, in an indirect but effective way, it also serves Him. Because it is in the world where this true history evolves, even though it does not evolve either with the world or from the world. Holy History is inserted in the profane one and mixed in it. The good seed is sown in the field of profane history.
This determines that profane history fulfills a series of services favoring the history of the souls, the nature and dimension of them, God only knows. Saint Paul also established this law: We know, he teaches, that God makes all things concur for the good of those who love Him, of those who, according to His designs, are chosen. Hence it follows that what happens to the chosen, who are the noblest parts of the Universe, is not to the benefit of others but of themselves. It is not so with what happens to the men that are to be condemned nor in all of the inferior beings of creation since these are ordered toward the good of the chosen. And just as the doctor may inflict a wound on a foot to cure the head, God allows sin and misuse of some beings for the good of the chosen. So that the word in Scripture be fulfilled: the fool will serve the wise; that is, the sinners will serve the just. (Saint Thomas In Rom 8, 28).
Here shows how profane history is supported by Holy History. And it is true that the work of God on those that are His is not fulfilled in other than the wide and turbulent realm of the world, subjected in turn to the triple dialectic of triple concupiscence, and this creates an interdependence between the two histories; it does not follow that profane history drags Holy History toward it, but, on the contrary, that the former is the one which is dragged and attracted by the latter. Since the Saints will judge the world and will defeat it.
The Jews in the Mystery of History
History, in all its religious and profane motions, is moved toward the service of the Mystical Body of Christ. Through history, the Body of Christ is being completed. And the work of incorporating new members into the Body of Christ is fulfilled through faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please the Lord (Heb 11, 6). But how will invoke Him they who have not believed? And how can they believe without having heard of Him? And how can they hear if no one preaches to them? And how will they preach if they are not sent? (Rom 10, 14) It follows that history, the Mystical Body of Christ, the faith, the preaching of the Gospels, and the evangelizing mission are closely united. History has no other reason for being than expounding on the time required for peoples to embrace the Christian faith. And this time, in turn, is conditioned by the force and the impetus with which the preaching is made to be heard by the peoples around the world. And in turn, this impetus in preaching depends on the strength with which the faith takes root in the peoples so that it stirs up missionaries who spread the evangelical message. The Church has been on a mission since the day that Christ deprived her of His visible presence. And the Christian peoples who have received the evangelical message have to constitute themselves in bearers of this divine message to other peoples. The preaching of the Gospels justifies that way the persistence of history. When the Gospel has reached all the peoples, history must cease. This Gospel of the kingdom shall be preached all around the world to all nations and then the end will come (Matt 24, 14).
The life of nations, therefore, in the present economy, has its reason for being in the preaching of the Gospel. But at the same time, the preaching of the Gospel is tangled up and sort of slowed down by a fundamental tension that derives from Jewish hatred against evangelization of the Gentiles. The Jews, as a permanent historical category, perform this role of being the enemies of the Gospel, who oppose with all their fury the conversion of the Gentiles. This law ‒ historical law ‒ is expounded by Paul in a series of texts the force of which is necessary to underline. The most significant one is from 1 Tes 2, 15, There he says: The Jews, those who put our Lord Jesus to death and persecute the prophets and us, who do not please God and are against all men; who prevent talking to the Gentiles and trying to obtain their salvation. But the wrath comes on themselves and is ready to be discharged to the brim. Hardly can the sin and the significance thereof weighing on the Jewish people be summarized with fewer words. They oppose the evangelical preaching by giving death to Jesus, its principal author, and to the prophets who prepared it, and also by persecuting the apostles that spread it. They do not please God even if they believe otherwise.
They are against all men. Saint Paul here expounds on the law explaining the permanent enmity against all nations as a historical category of the Jewish people. And he clarifies how they oppose all the other peoples: namely, preventing their evangelization and salvation. This is the role of the Jewish people: sow corruption and ruin on the peoples, especially the Christian ones.
This law of persecution of the Synagogue against the Church is also described by Saint Paul in Galathians 4, 28, where he says: And you, brethren, are children of the promise, the same way as Isaac. But just as the born from the flesh then persecuted the born from the Spirit, it is also so now. Ismael, the son of Abraham from the slave Hagar, persecuted the son of Abraham from Sarah, so the Synagogue persecutes the Church. In a permanent and fundamental way as a historical category.
And since the Church is in a state of mission, carrying the Gospel to all peoples through history, the Synagogue hinders that task and the plan of evangelization.
That is why the Church, with great wisdom and indoctrinated by the Apostle about the meddling of the Synagogue when she possessed temporal power opposed the entry of Jews into Christian lands. She knew that it was a dangerous people, who entrapped the Christians to perdition. Sacred people, without a doubt, which was not to be persecuted and should be treated with respect, as would be fitting to the greatness of their forefathers. But enemy people nonetheless, from which it was necessary to guard and defend against. The discipline of the ghetto was appropriate to their pitiful condition.
The Jews, from the ghetto, although impotent to deal deadly blows to Christendom, plotted in a thousand different forms for the perdition of the Christian peoples. They had two powerful weapons available: a dialectic knowledge of the word of God which was provided by rabbinic science, and with which they could concoct all kinds of heresies; and the power of gold with which to corrupt customs, especially of the powerful. They inflicted some harm, but from without, not getting to seize control over societies.
But when Christian fervor cooled off and the peoples became paganized, the formerly Chrstian society opened its doors to the Jews. The French Revolution, which signaled the death of the Christian society, introduces the Jews to its midst. From there, inside, and attaining ever greater power, the Jews get to corrupt the Christian peoples ever more deeply. With liberalism, socialism, and communism they dissolve all the natural and supernatural institutions that Christianity had consolidated. The structure of the Christian nations gets broken. The peoples no longer set for themselves missionary objectives nor political undertakings. They transform themselves into conglomerates of individuals moved by a purely economic well being which, in turn, they cannot achieve but under the dependence of and in the service of the Jews, who become the masters of global wealth.
The Jewish-Gentile tension which God has established in the midst of nations grows in the degree that the latter get away from Christ. And, of course, because this tension can only disappear within Christianity. Saint Paul teaches this categorically: In Christ, there is no Jew nor Gentile (Gal 3, 28). Consequently, if nations wish not to fall under the domination of the Jews they have to submit themselves to the gentle yoke of the law of Christ. If instead they reject the public kingship of Christ, they will necessarily fall under Jewish domination. The law of the dialectic tension between Jew and Gentile necessarily operates with theological rigor. And Europe, at one time Christian, which should have been the Gospel’s pallbearer to all nations in the world, now Judaized, takes the exploitation and the ruin to the pagan peoples, creating there insuperable obstacles to the preaching of the Gospel.
The Mystery of the Tension of Jews and Gentiles in Relation to History
This law of dialectical tension between Jews and Gentiles which Saint Paul denounces in 1 Tess 2, 15, which rules the evangelization of the peoples has to be founded on a mysterious decree of Providence in the present economy. Saint Paul teaches so in Chapters 9, 10, and 11 of his Letter to the Romans. We will point out his teachings for the sake of greater clarity
1) There is a superiority and preeminence of the Jew over the Gentile. As is well known, the divine choosing in favor of this minuscule people fills marvelous pages of the Old Testament. Saint Paul does not cease to remind this to the proudful Romans.
Tribulation and anguish over all that do evil; first on the Jew, then on the Gentile; but glory, honor, and peace for all that do good, first for the Jew, then to the Gentile (Rom 2,9).
If it is true that both Jews and Gentiles are inexcusable sinners (Rom 2, 1), however, the Jews have a superiority that Saint Paul openly recognizes: In what, then does the Jew have an advantage or in what does he take advantage of his circumcision? And he answers: In much, in all aspects. Because firstly, the word of God has been entrusted to Him. (Rom 3, 1).
But, someone may argue, the Jews have been unfaithful and have become undeserving of the divine promises. The Apostle answers. So what! If some have been incredulous, will perchance his infidelity nullify God’s fidelity? And in Rom 11, 28, he adds: As regards the Gospel, they are enemies to your good, but in accordance with the choice they are loved on account of their forefathers. For the gifts and vocation of God are irrevocable.
2) But the superiority God has adjudicated to the Jew comes from the faith and not from the flesh
The permanent temptation of the Jewish people has consisted in believing that their greatness comes purely from their carnal lineage and not from the faith. It is clear that their carnal lineage was great, as it was to be the vehicle that would bring us our Savior. But they were great for reason of the Savior and because God in his designs had chosen their and not some other lineage to bring us the Savior. Saint Paul strongly points this truth out in Gal. 3, 6, making us see that the greatness of Abraham did not consist of his flesh, because for the flesh he was the father of Ismael by his slave Hagar, without this bringing him any glory; his greatness consisted in the faith, in that he believed, he believed that Sarah, his wife, already old, would bring him Isaac, son of the Promise, and so much did Abraham believe, that he hesitated not in obeying the divine mandate of sacrificing his only legitimate son. The faith saves. The law and the flesh fail because they are a curse: And Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by making himself a curse for our sake, as it is written: “Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree” so that the blessing of Abraham be extended on the peoples in Christ and by faith we receive the promise of the Spirit.
3) The Jewish-Gentile tension, with the superiority of the Jew over the Gentile ends within Christianity.
This historical category signifying the dialectic tension between the Jews and the Gentiles, which in Saint Paul's theology is to rule the entire history, ends in Christianity. Not on temporal terms, but on suprahistorical ones.
When Jews and Christians enter the Church, they make a profession of Christ in which all division ends. So is how the Apostle teaches in Gal 3, 26: All of you, then, are children of God for the faith in Jesus Christ. Because all of you who have been baptized in Christ have been clothed with Christ. No longer is there Jew or Greek, no longer serf or free, no longer man or woman, because all of you are one in Jesus Christ.
Christianity is not carried out in one instance but is progressively fulfilled in the historical process. Tensions, and especially those between Jews and Gentiles are to exist for the process of evangelization of nations to be complied with. For this reason, the Jew makes himself present in all nations at the same time as the missionaries. If in a certain way his presence confirms the evangelical message as the fulfillment of the prophecies, in a different way he is the authentic contradictor of Christ and Christianity, who prevents talking to the Gentiles and procuring their salvation (1 Tes 2, 16).
But once converted, both the Jews and the Gentiles, have nothing to fear from the Jews. Not because these will not entrap but because their entrapments are vain for he who is united with Christ.
4) There is, therefore, a great mystery with respect to the Jews, and it is that a part of that people has been reproved so that the Gentile peoples could be saved.
The apostle teaches us that a part of Israel has been reproved. In Rom 9, 30-33 he openly teaches: What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who followed not after justice, have attained to justice, even the justice that is of faith. But Israel, by following after the law of justice, is not come unto the law of justice. Why so? Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were of works. For they stumbled at the stumbling stone. As it is written: Behold I lay in Sion a stumbling stone and a rock of scandal; and whosoever believeth in him shall not be confounded.
The word of Isaiah (28, 16) was fulfilled: Therefore thus saith the Lord God: Behold I will lay a stone in the foundations of Sion, a tried stone, a cornerstone, a precious stone, founded in the foundation. Against this stone stumbled and fell a part of the Jewish people. As it is written: God hath given them the spirit of insensibility; eyes that they should not see; and ears that they should not hear, until this present day. (Rom 11, 8) And the Apostle adds: And David saith: Let their table be made a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling block, and a recompense unto them. (Rom 11, 9)
But the reproof has not been total but only partial, and God has reserved a remnant of Israel. This is how the Apostle clearly teaches it: 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 hath not cast away his people, which he foreknew. Know you not what the scripture saith of Elias; how he calleth on God against Israel? Lord, they have slain thy prophets, they have dug down thy altars; and I am left alone, and they seek my life. But what saith the divine answer to him? I have left me seven thousand men, that have not bowed their knees to Baal. Even so then at this present time also, there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace. (Rom 11, 1-5).
A part of Israel was reproved so that mercy would reach the Gentile peoples. Precisely here is the mystery in which God, pitying the peoples and resolved to save them, allows the perdition of a part of Israel and in substitution decrees the insertion of the Gentile peoples in the great Olive Tree of the Church. But I ask ‒ says the Apostle (Rom 11, 11) ‒ 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.
The Gentiles are to take good care not to pride themselves thinking that the fall of a part of the Jews has been brought about to their merit; rather, they have to fear before the unsoundable mystery of mercy and of the divine justice. And in this regard the Apostle says: And if some of the branches were split off, and you, being a wild olive, were inserted in her and made a participant of the root, that is, of the fruitfulness of the olive, do not be conceited against the branches. And if you conceit yourselves, keep in mind that you do not give sustenance to the root but the root gives it to you. But you may say: The branches were split off so that I could be inserted. Well, for their incredulity they were split off, and you are on foot because of the faith. Do not be conceited, rather fear. Since if God did not pardon the natural branches, neither will He pardon you.
The reproof of a part of Israel is allowed until the fullness of the nations enter the Church
Saint Paul openly teaches that: blindness in part has happened in Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in. And so all Israel should be saved.
While part of Israel is reproved and the Gentiles converted, envy shall arise of the Jews against the converted Gentiles.
Saint Paul utters this in various passages. So in Rom 10, 19 he makes the words of Moses his own: I will provoke you to jealousy by that which is not a nation; by a foolish nation, I will anger you. And in the same letter (11, 14) If, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them who are my flesh, and may save some of them. Saint Thomas, in his commentary on this passage, notices that the Jews felt envy and hatred against the converted Gentiles, this is, hatred that came from envy. It is said, he adds, that God induces the envy and moves them to hatred, not in what malice causes within them but in what subtracts graces from them, from where the Jews take occasion for hatred and envy.
This hatred and envy of which the Apostle here speaks is that which provokes the persecutions against the Church and the Christians of which the Apostle speaks in Tess 2, 15 and Gal 4, 28 the texts of which we have reproduced above. Note well that this enmity does not properly constitute tension, as the latter presumes reciprocity of actions; and even when the Church is hated by the Synagogue, the former does not hate the latter, but limits itself to be prepared against its entrapments and attacks.
These entrapments and attacks of the Synagogue against the Church and the Christians are carried out especially in the public plane of nations, and are efficacious factors of the movement of history, as we have said before.
7) In the course of history, in spite of the reproof of a part of Israel, some of the Jews will be saved.
Saint Paul teaches (Rom 11,14) that If, by any means, I may provoke to emulation them who are my flesh, and may save some of them. This does not appear to announce this as an exclusivity of his personal apostolate, but as a constant in all Christian history.
8) But also Israel will be converted
So the Apostle announces clearly and gloriously: the Jews will convert Now, if the offence of them be the riches of the world, and the diminution of them, the riches of the Gentiles; how much more the fullness of them! (Rom 11, 12) And later on: For if the loss of them be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Rom 11, 15).
Saint Paul takes good care of making notice that the fall of Israel has been provisional and only to the benefit of the Gentiles: For I would not have you ignorant, brethren, of this mystery, (lest you should be wise in your own conceits), 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: There shall come out of Sion, he that shall deliver, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob. And this is to them my covenant: when I shall take away their sins (Rom 11, 25 - 27).
Saint Paul could not have taught the conversion of the Jews with greater force, and that, as a right, meaning to say that if their fall had befallen to do a favor to the Gentiles, as soon as said favor was fulfilled, the Jews would be reintegrated, Saint Paul does not conceal the pride of his race, which was chosen by God. For I am Israelite, of the lineage of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin (Rom 11, 1).
The conversion of the Jews had also been clearly announced by the Prophets of the Old Testament. Psalms 147 and 126 celebrate it with a triumphant air. Isaiah (59,20), Jeremy (31, 10-12; 16-17; 33), Ezequiel (37, 1), Hosea (3, 4, 5), Malachi (3, 23), do not cease to sing it with joy. And the New Testament announces it, although with a dramatic air: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not? Behold, your house shall be left to you, desolate. For I say to you, you shall not see me henceforth till you say: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. (Matt 23, 37-39) and Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldest not? (Luke 13:34). The accent of this prediction is not placed on the conversion, but in the punishment of which the Jewish people will be the target because of their incredulity. The conversion is announced in an indirect manner inasmuch as it is said in it that the Jews would greet Jesus with the Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord.
Also Luke, 21, 24, announces Israel’s conversion: And they shall fall by the edge of the sword; and shall be led away captives into all nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by the Gentiles; till the times of the nations be fulfilled.
Saint Paul, in the second letter to the Corinthians, 3, 15-16 also reveals the return of the Jews to the Lord: But even until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart; but when they shall be converted to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.
9) The Jews will convert at the edge of history.
The conversion of the Jews is clearly announced in Sacred Scripture.
But what is problematic is the time when it is to be fulfilled. Up to now, the common opinion of the exegetes, and especially of Saint Thomas, has been that the conversion was to put an end to the unfolding of history. But recently, authors such as Charles Journet (in ‘Destinées d’Israel’, Egloff, Paris, 1945, page 339 and subsequent) have defended that the return of Israel will be produced in the plot of history itself. That far from putting an end to historical development, it would be an event of such magnitude that would as a fruit produce a great epiphany in catholicity which would develop over several centuries, That the end of history would come just after the conversion of the Jews and of the great epiphany, when the great persecutions under the action of the mystery of iniquity announced by Saint Paul in 2 Tess 2, 7 would arise.
Journet intends to found his opinion on the words of the Apostle For if the loss of them be the reconciliation of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? (Romans 11:15). The Apostle, Journet argues, says not the resurrection of the dead, but a resurrection. It means, in consequence, that the return of Israel will produce such a recrudescence of love in the Church that it can be compared with a return of the dead to life. The world, he goes on saying, will participate, in a fuller and more manifest way, of the first resurrection of the thousand years of which Revelation 20 4-6 speaks, that means, of the life of grace, just as has been shed with profusion by Christ during the entire era of the incarnation and lasts until the time of His second Parousia at the end of times (ibid, 341 and E.B. Allo, L’Apocalypse de Saint Jean, p CXXXI).
But it is easy to respond to this. Certainly from the referred text it follows that the conversion of the Jews should bring to the world and to the Gentiles a good much greater than that which brought their fall. But what has been the fruit of the fall of the Jews? Nothing less than the Redemption, called by Paul the riches of the world … riches of the Gentiles, reconciliation of the world. And what other essential events can be comparable to this one, or even more, exceed it in riches, but the Parousia itself? At least, it is certain that a greater degree of effusion of the grace cannot be compared as an equal or greater thing than the effusion of grace that operates in the Redemption.
But there was a more fundamental reason which explains why the ancient exegetes have linked, out of spite of a resurrection from among the death, the conversion of Israel to the final resurrection. And this reason was their conception of history, which made them perceive that the opposition of Jews and Gentiles was a historical category that illumined all the mystery of Christ and of his redemption of the world, in such a way that when such opposition ended, history would also end. As a consequence, since the conversion of Israel would put an end to the tension between Jews and Gentiles it would put an end to history (See Gaston Fessard, ‘Theologie et Histoire’ in Dieu Vivant, N° 8)
The conversion of the Jews is a metahistorical event, properly eschatological, because it is to put an end to a factor that makes history advance, which is the tension between Jews and Gentiles. It is clear, on the other hand, that we cannot speak of an event entirely outside history, as though it were to be realized above and beyond time and history. As long as there is time, let us do good to everyone (Gal 6, 10) and only historical time is time to do good and become saved. Therefore, the conversion of the Jews is to be produced within history and at the end of it. Let us refer to it at the edge of history.
10) History marches toward eschatology, in which there will be only one people of Jews and Gentiles
History moves agitated from the inside by the division of Jews and Gentiles, of master and free, of man and woman. Religious, political, economic and social struggles move peoples against one another in a mad ambition for predominance. The role that pertains to the Judeo-Gentile tension in this march of history is crucial. And this not as a simple fact, but as law that has been imposed by God in the reason of being of history itself which is the preaching of the Gospel. Saint Paul has revealed this mystery to us. But Saint Paul reveals to us also that history marches in perfect unity with Christ, in whom there is neither Jew nor Gentile.
In his magnificent letter to the Ephesians (2, 11) reminds the Gentiles in the first place, the pitiful condition in which they were at one time: you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the conversation of Israel, and strangers to the testament, having no hope of the promise, and without God in this world. The state of gentility cannot be more disgraceful.
But now in Christ Jesus, you, who some time were afar off, are made nigh by the blood of Christ (Eph 2:13). The Gentile peoples have entered the Church and have listened to the word of salvation. And the Church is the true society of Israel. And Christ is our peace, who hath made both one, and breaking down the middle wall of partition, the enmities in his flesh (Eph 2, 14)
In Christ, then, peace has been made between the two peoples. Because by coming, He announced to us peace to those far away and to those who are near, because by Him we the ones and the others have the power to get close to the Father in one and the same Spirit.
In Jesus Christ, then, neither Jews nor Gentiles are no more strangers and foreigners; but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and the domestics of God. Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone (Eph 2, 19). And during all the historical process the erection of the Church is fulfilled by taking the stones from all the peoples, Jews and Gentiles, in accordance with the unsoundable divine plan. And there, in the Church, which is Christ extended, ends all division in such a way that also when the Church is fully built will history end.
The Jews in the Mystery of Eschatology
To get a complete idea of the Jewish people and of its enormous significance in the plan of redemption and sanctification of the world, we also have to keep in mind their role in metahistory or eschatology; that is, in those final last things, then outside history, which are sort of gravitating over all of history and attracting it to them. These events begin:
a) With the fullness of nations that are to be evangelized still as nations in their cultural structures which make them such determined nations. Process which is to be taking place all throughout history, in great part, and as a principal effect in the dialectic between Jews and Gentiles, between the Synagogue and the Church. The precise moment of history in which we live is characterized by the culmination of the struggle of the Synagogue against the Church to prevent the Christian Message of the peoples. The Church is about to make this Message penetrate the peoples. But the Synagogue, with liberalism and communism, strongly rejects this Message. However the Church, especially its frontal focus, the Cathedra of Rome, is being armed with an exceptional vitality which, under the fortitude of the Holy Spirit, makes her capable of unmaking the whole series of errors that during the last four centuries the Synagogue has heaped on the world. This seems to be the significance of the Marian messages announcing peace to the present world, under which the plenitude of the peoples in the bosom of the Church would be signified.
b) As the plenitude of the nations in the bosom of Christendom is fulfilled, the conversions of the Jews will be multiplying themselves, ever more valuable in number and quality, by the effect of emulation of which the Apostle speaks. But both the plenitude of the Gentiles in the bosom of the Church and the conversions of the Jews would provoke a greater fury and resentment in the central nucleus of Judaism, which in the measure that it would become smaller it would turn more fanatic, until achieving success in its task of corrupting and submitting the world of the gentility. In that way would the fulfillment of the universal apostasy of which Saint Paul in 2 Tess 2, 3, speaks when he says Let no man deceive you by any means, for unless there come a revolt first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; and Saint Luke (18, 8) where the Lord asks: But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?; and Saint Matthew (24, 12) where the Lord says: And because iniquity hath abounded, the charity of many shall grow cold. Also in 1 Tim 4,1.
c) The universal apostasy will form a single historical event with the coming of the Antichrist, as can be drawn from the passage in Saint Paul’s 2 Tess 2, 3. The Antichrist will be recognized as the messiah of the Jews and master of the Gentiles. In this way, the universal apostasy of the Gentile peoples and the Jewish domination over all of the peoples will also constitute a single historical event. The coming of the Antichrist will be in the working of Satan, that is, by his promptings. Satan will be let free from his prison, he will come out and seduce the nations (Rev 20, 7)
d) To the plenitude of the nations which will be, absolutely, contemporaneous to the coming of the Antichrist, will follow the conversion of the Jews which will take place from the preaching of Eliah and Enoch as per that of Malachi 4, 5-6 Behold I will send you Elias the prophet, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers: lest I come, and strike the earth with anathema.
e) With the universal apostasy and the revealing of the Antichrist the great tribulation announced by Jesus in the Gospel will be produced . (Matt 24, 21; Mc 13, 21; Luke 21, 25)
f) And immediately after the tribulation of those days, the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be moved. And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all tribes of the earth mourn: and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with much power and majesty. (Matt 24, 20; Mc 13, 26; Luke 21, 27)
g) And he shall send his angels with a trumpet, and a great voice: and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the farthest parts of the heavens to the utmost bounds of them. (Matt 24, 31; Mc 13, 27)
h) And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. (Matt 25, 31)
i) But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up. (2 Peter 3, 10)
j) But we look for new heavens and a new earth (2 Peter 3, 13); For behold I create new heavens, and a new earth (Is 65, 17); according to the vision in Revelation (21, 1): And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth was gone, and the sea is now no more.
k) And a great banquet shall be prepared so that you may eat and drink at my table, in my kingdom: and may sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (Luke 22, 30).
Just as the people of Israel perform a crucial role within the historical time, so shall they also perform one in the eschatological events. It is not possible to forget that the entire work of Christ is reduced to the foundation and preaching of his messianic kingdom; universal kingdom in time and space; historical and eschatological kingdom; spiritual and internal kingdom, but also temporal and external. And in this messianic kingdom the people of Israel, even in its carnal and historical reality, fulfills a mission of foremost importance.
Only to Abraham, from whose loins this people was drawn, are the great promises that found this messianic kingdom announced for the first time: And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed. And only in Abraham begins this kingdom to acquire effective realization.
The patriarchs of the Old Covenant, of which succession Abraham is the first, will thus be the roots of this messianic kingdom which is to be perpetuated throughout history and then also in eternity. And with the patriarchs also the Apostles will constitute the first fruits and root of the abundant Olive which is the Church (Rom 11, 16 - 17)
From the people of Israel come the adoption and the glory, and the covenants, and the legislation, and the worship, and the promises; theirs are the promises and from which according to the flesh the Christ comes, who is above all things (Rom 9, 4 - 5). Israel has, consequently, a triple greatness. The first one is that of the name since Thy name shall not be called Jacob, but Israel: for if thou hast been strong against God, how much more shalt thou prevail against men? (Gen 32, 28). The second for the great benefits that it has received from God. The third one, since from Israel has Jesus Christ his carnal origin, salvation comes from the Jews. (John 4, 22).
But Israel is great even in the branches that have been split from this Olive to be grafted in the wild olive of gentility, because they are to fulfill a mission in the divine plan, which is accelerating the evangelization of the world and with it the advance of history.
But at the end, when the nations have entered the messianic kingdom, this people, with its new insertion in the Olive from which it had been in part split, will signal the precise moment of the beginning of the great eschatological events that prepare the Parousia of the Son of Man.
And then in the consummation of the eschatology itself, when the final and eternal banquet of divine contemplation takes place, guests shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven (Matt 8, 11)
Epilogue
The above considerations have been written to explain the Jew.
The Jewish race is a saving race in Christ. Any ponderings to be made of the Jews will turn out to be short in face of the greatness of this race who brought Christ and Mary to us.
But Christ and Mary are so great that their greatness surpasses all the races because they surpass the human race. Christ and Mary reach the divine. Christ as only begotten son of the Father, Splendor of the Divine Substance. The Virgin Mary, as Mother of God. Hence the Jew, genealogical support of those greatnesses that surpass his own value, should humble himself in his own smallness for those greatnesses that he supports.
But, on the contrary, Israel was bitten by pride.
Foolishly, it believed itself to be greater than all the peoples and races … and above all, greater than Christ and Mary.
Believing itself superior to everyone, it erected a fence around itself so as to not get contaminated from the inferiority of the rest; and labored with guile to dominate them. And has been accomplishing it. With the press and with money the Jews now have control over the Christian nations.
Within the realm of carnal greatness that his astuteness has built with the labor ot the de-christianized forces, the Jews are masters, and there is no power, it seems, that can resist their hidden power.
Shall then the Christian peoples have to see themselves sentenced to an opprobrious slavery, and without any redemption under Jewish prepotency? No way! With manly energy they have to get rid of this mortiferous domination. How? Before pointing it out, I will ask readers to weigh the words they are about to read, because they have been written within the most strict logical precision. And have also been written within the purest Christian principles.
Known is that Christianity is summarized in the great commandment: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart... and thy neighbor as thyself.
Love means seeking the good of those we love. Man must, then, seek the love of God first and then the good of man.
The good of God is that His name be blessed and glorified in the works and in the compliance with His law.
The good of man is that all his rights which conspire towards achieving his eternal and temporal wellbeing be recognized.
Being it so, a father who were not to repress a son of his that violates the rights of God or the rights of his Mother would be transgressing the commandment to love. The father that does not punish, when necessary, the son that does not respect his mother or who mistreats his siblings, will not conform to charity. The ruler who fails to protect the interests of his nation or that fails to prevent and punish the abuses of bad citizens does not conform to charity.
Charity is not sentimentalism which consents all errors and abuses of the others. Charity is to procure efficaciously the real wellbeing (eternal and temporal) of the others and hate evil at all times.
This being presumed, how are the Jewish intentions to dominate the Christian peoples to be forestalled?
In two simultaneous ways.
First: Affirming and consolidating the Christian life within the peoples.
As I have frequently repeated over the course of this book, Jewish domination marches hand in hand with the de-christianization of the peoples. It is a theological law proven by history. Hence, the true Christianization of the peoples, with a deep and interior catholicism of faith and charity, will signify the decline of Judaic domination, it means solidly restoring the Christian sense in public and private life.
Second: Directly repressing the Jewish entrapments.
And let us observe here that the Jews, as children of the devil as Christ called them, also have diabolical methods to dominate the Christian peoples. These methods are reduced to lying.
You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and he stood not in the truth; because truth is not in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father thereof. (John 8, 44)
Saint Paul, talking of Satan, tells us that Satan himself transformeth himself into an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11, 14)
Lying is the great weapon of the devil and of his children the Jews. This is why the devil is figured in the serpent, and the Jews also adopt the figure of the serpent as a Kabbalistic symbol.
Hence, the method proper of Judaism in its struggle against the Christian peoples is maliciousness.
It kills the Christian peoples under the appearance of saving them. It enslaves them with the pretext of liberty. It dominates them with the pretext of equality. It steals from them with the pretext of granting credit to them. It poisons them with the pretext of the Enlightenment.
And on the other hand, always lying with marvelous ability, blames the true saviors of being the enemies of the peoples. And this way, Christ, the Church, priesthood, Christian rulers, are presented to people as vile swindlers.
The tragic struggle in the Spanish Civil War is the best demonstration of this. Judaism with its headquarters in Moscow, had corrupted the Spanish masses and had bribed cowardly rulers. It had wanted to finish its work sinking the Spanish nation into a ruinous slavery viler than the one in Soviet Russia. But heroes emerge in the Spain of the Cid and of the Catholic Kings, resolved to liberate the Spanish nation from this disgraceful tyranny, but then international Judaism broadcasts throughout the entire world that a bunch of factious rebels conspire against the constituted power and against the Spanish people.
What tactic is to be adopted against this satanic struggle founded on lies?
The tactic to adopt is the frank and resolute tactic of the paladins of Truth: the tactic of the sword.
Let me, before anything, say that a profound error is to represent the sword as something incompatible with Christianity.
In Christian symbolism Saint Michael the Archangel is represented fighting a dragon and brandishing a sword (Rev 12, 7).
Genesis tells us that after the sin of our first fathers, God put before the paradise of delights a cherubim with a sword of fire (Gen 3 24).
Christ our Lord tells his disciples in the eve of his Passion: But now he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise a scrip; and he that hath not, let him sell his coat, and buy a sword.... But they said: Lord, behold here are two swords. And he said to them, It is enough.
In the dogmatic bull Unam Sanctam, the great Pontiff of the rights of the Church, Boniface VIII, has seen in these two swords the two powers, the spiritual and the temporal, which have to be at the service of the Church. That in the power of the Church, he says, be there two swords, we know from the Gospel. One and the other in possession of the Church are namely the spiritual and the material sword. But the latter should be used for the good of the Church, the former by the Church itself. The former, of the priest, the latter in the hands of kings and soldiers but under the command of the priest. It is necessary, then, that one sword be below the other sword and that the temporal power submit itself to the spiritual one.
One and the other sword should sway in defense of the Truth and to restore justice against the concealed entrapments of the iniquity. And it is proper to any man, vir, to wield the sword whenever it becomes necessary, to come out in the defense of the infringed rights of God and of the Church.
Sacred scriptures (First book of Machabees) praise Judas Machabeus, who. putting on a breastplate as a giant, and girt his warlike armour about him in battles, and protected the camp with his sword.
And in the splendor of the Christian age the men of Christendom, exhorted by the Holy Pontiffs and lead by brave chiefs fought resolutely against the enemies of Christianity. The age of the Crusades fills the most glorious pages of the Church. And the figure of Joan of Arc is not a decor in Catholic churches but a symbol and an example that invites every Christian to fight with valor so that the iniquity will not enslave the children of the Light.
The sword is the only efficacious weapon, with short-term efficacy, that can defeat the Jewish entrapments. Because the sword, the military, is within the heroic of man, of vir, of the male. It is connected by metaphysical links with the spiritual values of man. It is something essentially opposed to the carnal. If the Jews before Christ were heroes capable of brandishing the sword as the Machabee brothers, after Christ they carnalized and made themselves coward just as all the Christians who have been stupefied by liberalism and by democratic scourges.8
There are two radically opposed ways to combat: one is carnal, the other is spiritual; one is of the devil, the other one of God; one is that of the Jew, the other of the Christians; one that entraps, the other one that charges with virility.
The devil defeated Eve with seducing words, but the Virgin defeats the devil crushing his head. The devil tempts Christ with fascinating promises, but Christ rejects the devil with the fierceness of a lion. The jews plot secret conspiracies against Christ, but Christ denounces and destroys their machinations in plain daylight. And in the zenith of Medieval greatness, while the Jews conspired in their ghettoes, the knights and the heroes fought in the daylight against the enemies of the Cross. The Middle Ages are mystic and warriorlike as all spiritual grandeur. The sword is at the service of the Cross.
Christian charity, which commands us to procure efficaciously the good of God, the good of the Church, the good of the Christian peoples, commands us for the same reason to wield the sword to defend efficaciously these goods when there is no other way to secure them.
If it has not yet arrived, perhaps it is not far from coming the moment when, if we don’t want to see the name of God proscribed, the temples burnt, the priests reviled, the virgins defiled by the unleashed rabble, it will be necessary to brace our backs and brandish the sword.
If because of sentimentalism or cowardice we refrain from fighting with vigor, we will have to live as slaves to a rabid minority of Jews who, after having vilified us in the most sacred, will subject us to the tyranny of dishonor.
Charity itself demands it. Because those who refuse to adopt that sole means that assures the inviolable respect of God, of the Church, of the Fatherland, of the sons and daughters, cannot say they truly love God, the Church, the Fatherland, or his sons and daughters.
Sole means, painful but indispensable, as is the use of the scalpel to cut the gangrene that infects the body.
The use of the sword entails a villainy when it is to exterminate the innocent; in contrast, when it is used to restore the rights of Truth and Justice it imports the honors of heroism.
In writing these pages I have felt the pain of thinking that many true Israelites may believe that with them the Jew is wished to be repressed for reason of him carrying Jewish blood, However, this is impossible to imagine!
It not only is not against the Jewish blood as such, but it is in defense of the true Jewish blood. Because the greatness of Israel is Christ and Mary. The greatness of Israel is the Jewish blood which runs in the veins of Christ and Mary. And in defense of that blood, that is, of the Christian principles, have these pages been written proscribing the infections of the pharisaic blood.
May the true Israelites understand that they can attain the true greatness of their blood, which is the universal greatness of the world, only when also they brandish the sword to clear from their midst the pharisaic ferment that perverts, and adhere to Him who came to save every man.
8 When the Jews, not too long ago, engaged to defend positive values, such as their religion or their land, they were able to give proof of their valor
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