God of Abraham, Forgive
August 9, 2023
Father John Riccardo
“Brothers and sisters: I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie; my conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. They are Israelites; theirs the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.”
Romans 9:1-5
We enter this coming Sunday upon three extremely difficult and important chapters of Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Unfortunately, we exit almost as soon as we enter. For whatever reason, these crucial chapters of Paul are largely omitted from the lectionary. We will hear only a small excerpt of Paul’s anguished wrestling with the question of how it is that the people God chose for so many blessings, not least the people from whom His only begotten Son would be born of the flesh, largely failed to accept Him? We will also miss his joyful anticipation of how the Lord of history is going to bring about the ultimate fulfillment of His plan.
Over and over in these chapters Paul reminds the Church in Rome that God has not and will not ever reject His promise to the Israelites. Furthermore, he reminds the Gentiles in the Church that they are “wild branches” that have been “grafted” onto the tree that is the Jewish people (cf. Romans 11:17-24).
We need to recall immediately that Paul was a Jew, the apostles were Jews, the mother of God was a Jew, and many of the early followers of Jesus were Jewish. It’s worth remembering that they never saw themselves as anything but Jewish. Jesus, after all, was the fulfillment of all of the promises God had made to their race. It’s just that the promises were fulfilled in shockingly unexpected ways.
These three chapters would be worth a prayerful reading and wrestling with in the days ahead, especially since they’re so sparsely covered in the lectionary and hardly ever preached on.
It might be worth taking a moment to reflect on how we see the Jewish people in the big picture. Do we spend enough time becoming familiar with the Old Testament? Do we remember that St. Jerome’s famous comment, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ,” was written in his commentary on Isaiah? In other words, if we don’t understand and know the Old Testament, we’ll never really understand Jesus.
As we enter into this section of Romans, my own memory is brought back to Pope John Paul II’s visit to Israel, and especially his statement at Yad Vashem and the prayer he placed into the Western Wall on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. May his words and prayer inspire us as disciples of Jesus to be agents of reconciliation and healing in a world torn apart by division, suspicion, anger and resentment.
“As bishop of Rome and successor of the Apostle Peter, I assure the Jewish people that the Catholic Church, motivated by the Gospel law of truth and love, and by no political considerations, is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place.”
“The church rejects racism in any form as a denial of the image of the Creator inherent in every human being.”
“In this place of solemn remembrance, I fervently pray that our sorrow for the tragedy which the Jewish people suffered in the 20th century will lead to a new relationship between Christians and Jews. Let us build a new future in which there will be no more anti-Jewish feeling among Christians or anti-Christian feeling among Jews, but rather the mutual respect required of those who adore the one Creator and Lord, and look to Abraham as our common father in faith.” March 23, 2000
“God of our fathers,
you chose Abraham and his descendants
to bring your Name to the Nations:
we are deeply saddened by the behavior of those
who in the course of history
have caused these children of yours to suffer,
and asking your forgiveness we wish to commit ourselves
to genuine brotherhood
with the people of the Covenant.”
March 26, 2000