6/12/2019 6:32:07 AM
Thought Of the Day
“”
"I have come not to abolish but to fulfill"
My visit today [to this synagogue] desires to make a decisive contribution to the consolidation of good relations between our two communities... Among the numerous treasures of the Second Vatican Council's declaration «Nostra Aetate»... the first is that the Church of Christ rediscovers its bond with Judaism «as it examines its own mystery». The Jewish religion is not something extrinsic but, in a certain way, intrinsic to our own religion. Therefore we have a relationship towards it that we have with no other religion. You are very specially our brothers and, in a certain sense, one might say our elder brothers... The journey we have begun is only just commencing: some time is still needed... to suppress any kind of prejudice, even of an unwitting sort,... and to make known... the true face of both Jews and Judaism, as also of Christians and Christianity... None of us is ignorant that our fundamental divergence from the beginning is the attachment of we Christians to the person and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, a son of your people, from whom are sprung also the Virgin Mary, the apostles, "foundation stones and pillars of the Church" (Gal 2:9), and the great majority of members of the first Christian community... But we must then say that the open paths towards our mutual collaboration, in the light of a common inheritance drawn from the Law and the prophets, are various and important...: above all, a collaboration on behalf of mankind..., his dignity, liberty and rights in a society... where justice reigns and where... peace is to reign: that 'shalom' intended by the lawgivers, prophets and wisdom teachers of Israel... Out of my visit, and the concord and calm we have come to, may a living and health-giving spring arise, like the river Ezekiel saw flowing from the east gate of the Temple (Ez 47:1f.), which will help to heal the wounds from which our city of Rome is suffering. By doing this we shall be faithful respectively to our most sacred commitments but also to those things that most deeply unite and bind us: faith in the one God who "loves the stranger" and "shows justice to the orphan and widow," striving to love and help them (Dt 10:18; Lv 19:18.34). Christians have learned this command of the Lord from the Torah, which we here venerate, and from Jesus, who carried to its limits the love that the Torah demands.