A Christmas Message
Dear friends, Shalom from Israel-Jerusalem!
During this special period in which we celebrate the importance of light, from Hanukkah lights to Christmas lights, I would like to share with you a reflection about the incarnation of God, passing through Israel to the world.
First of all, I think that nobody could have assumed last February, that we would arrive in December this year in a situation such as the world finds itself. All perspectives, the most pessimistic ones at that time, did not predict what lay ahead. At the moment, after having seen so much suffering, loss of life, anguish, fears, and uncertainties, humanity is still inside the tunnel and the light that points the way out of the crisis has not yet appeared!
The celebrated start of the vaccine application, by several countries against Covid 19, seems to indicate that we are in the declining phase of the crisis. On the other hand, it is known that if the process follows its course successfully, it is still necessary to be patient and remain on the alert. In the best conditions, people will be protected, but not all at once and certainly many people will not have immediate access to this resource. It will be a concrete test of humanity- countries, organizations, and people - all of us, if we can learn some lessons from this catastrophe that has befallen us.
It is not a time to lose hope, but rather we need to look for strengths and motivations in our reliable resources. It is time to renew our projects oriented towards the other who suffers more than we do, who has fewer conditions than we have. It is known that the Covid-19 attacked the whole world, but not all were affected in the same way. There are differences in suffering. Many had their excess reduced while others lost their jobs, their only source of life. Many spent their time confined at home while others had no home to which to be confined. Many suffer, despite the treatments received, while others do not even have access to treatment.
Given that, the circumstances we are experiencing this year are different, and therefore our celebration of Christmas should be lived differently. It is an occasion for each of us to discover a new sense of Christmas.
The Word of God teaches us that in times when people go through difficulties, experiencing severe suffering, God becomes closer: God is present in human suffering. In Exodus 3, 1-6 God reveals himself to Moses from the middle of the burning bush. And the tradition of Israel interprets this passage as God who associates Himself with the suffering of the people of Israel in their slavery in Egypt and the suffering that would come in the future. Suffering is not caused by God, but He suffers with those who suffer, and therefore if humanity suffers God is in that suffering with people.
The people of Israel, throughout its history, have experienced God and God’s closeness. Every difficulty presented or experienced suffering, was an occasion to perceive the presence of God among the people. This experience of being close to God and feeling Him among them was transmitted through the prayer and teaching of Israel: “Had not the Lord been with us - let Israel say, had not the Lord been with us - when men rose up against us ... our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 124). “Lift up joyful shouts, exult, O inhabitants of Sion, for great is the Lord of Israel among you” (Is 12: 6).
This historical learning of the presence of God has deepened the awareness of the people of Israel that the God who reveals Himself to them is the One and Unique God, there is no other, “there is no god besides me” (Dt 32:39), “For all the gods of the nations are idols”(Ps 96:5) Therefore, He is the God of all humanity and all creation. Primarily, God's plan is manifested by the choice of Abram to constitute a people (the people of Israel) and through these people to reveal Himself to all humanity: “and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gn 12: 3). God's action in the world, it can be said, is conditioned by the promises made to Abraham and their development as seen in the lives of Abraham's descendants. This particular relationship between God and Israel is in view of the universal plan: God becomes known to all mankind through Israel, namely, Israel is an instrument through which God is recognized by the Nations. God's choice of Israel is about leading humanity to Himself: “I will also make you a light for the Nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Is 49: 6). The fullness of all Nations recognizing the God who reveals Himself to Israel is at the same time the realization of God’s plan for Israel. For God, Israel and other Nations are distinct, with specific vocations, but both depend on each other. In the song of Simeon, when Jesus is presented in the Temple, which is the place of the presence of God (Shekinah), Simeon announces the final moment when the Nations all see the light, therefore, salvation has come to the Nations and as a consequence, he sees the glory of Israel, the people of God: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Nations, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2: 30-32).
Israel first has a responsibility to be God's testimony to the nations. Therefore, the salvation of the world depends on Israel, on its faithfulness to the Covenant with God, in the practise of His Word. This intrinsic relationship established between God, Israel, and the Nations has raised in the religious consciousness of Israel that God would be manifested in visible form, divine-human.
The so-called apocryphal books like Ezra, Enoch, which reflect a popular Jewish belief spread during the Second Temple period, describe this spiritual figure with divine powers and eternal duration. We also have in the book of the Prophet Daniel the figure of someone similar to the human but who comes from above and his power is from heaven and eternal: “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Dn 7:13-14). The figure of the divine Child in Isaiah with absolute powers who perpetuates the seed of David is another example: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined ... For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:1. 5-6).
The prophet Isaiah, who so contemplated the universal dimension of Israel's vocation, announced that the days would come when all nations would recognize and sing praises to the God who reveals Himself to Israel and to whom Israel bears witness: “And the Nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee” (Isaiah 60:3-4). We learned that in Isaiah's view, the Nations remain Nations and it is in this condition that they recognize God, the One God who reveals Himself to Israel.
In the same way, Isaiah foresees the particular way for God to manifest Himself, to be visibly in the world, being in the temporary reality of Israel’s history and from there to redeem history in its entirety: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanu-El (אל עמנו) God with us” (Isaiah 7:14).
The New Testament texts drink everything from these sources, from what is written and from what was an oral interpretation that did not reach us, but that we can perceive in between the lines. The Jesus event is primarily founded on the Jewish Scriptures and their interpretation. As Paul says: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (I Cor 15: 3-4). We also learn this, as another example, from the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. What gives authority in transmitting the truth of faith is the foundation in Scripture and not the descriptions of the facts that occurred: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets...”(Mk 1:1).
The Gospel of John begins with its final vision. Faith in the resurrected Jesus illuminates his birth. It is the experience of the resurrected Jesus that illuminates the reading of the Scriptures and the understanding of their interpretation that the people of Israel had developed throughout history: “And the Word (dabar) is made flesh and set its tent (Sukkah) among us and we have seen his glory, that glory which, as a unique Son full of grace and truth, he received from the Father”(Jn 1:14). The idea behind the dwelling as Sukkah evokes the end of time, eschatology: the experience that the people of Israel had during the Sukkoth festival: the moment to see God and be seen by Him as a great assembly of God's people with Him in a divine experience. John extends this experience of Israel to a universal and final dimension. The time has already begun, hope has already begun to be realized: the God who revealed Himself to Israel, now through Israel encompasses the universal. This Johannine theology is present and developed in the book of Revelation where the Sukkah takes its ultimate meaning because the author or the author's community was already seen as being at the end of time: “Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne will spread his Sukkah (tent) over them” (Rev 7:15). As we can see in the sequence it is the experience of eternal Sukkah and the fullness of Israel's messianic hope in its universal dimension: “Behold, the Sukkah of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev 21:3).
In this period that we are invited to celebrate the birth of Jesus, according to what the New Testament teaches us, we have to take into account that our faith, the Christian faith is a post-Easter faith, post-resurrection. The theme of the birth of Jesus is not present in the first Christian writings, nor in Paul's letters or the letters attributed to him, nor in Mark's Gospel. This indicates that the communities in the first decades of the first century were formed in and transmitted the experience of the resurrection as the central and essential element. Then, over the years, the generation that did not live with Jesus felt the need to tell about His life, from the beginning. The transmission of lived faith in Jesus, resurrected by the Jews, men and women, that He is the expected Messiah and God made Man-Jew, filled the historical life of Jesus with meaning until his birth and much more. This conviction of faith integrated Jesus into the history of Salvation, according to the Scriptures, from the beginning of creation, passing through the call of Abraham and his descendants, in order to form the particular people of God and confirm the perpetuity of the House of David.
For this reason, the proclamation of the great mystery of the incarnation of God in history takes on its meaning and can be understood within the Jewish reality in which Jesus and his Jewish followers lived, where the experience of faith was combined with the Holy Scriptures and their interpretation throughout the history that was impregnated with the certainty of the presence of God that manifests in Emmanuel (God with us), also understood as the expected Messiah. The incarnation, which we celebrate as Christmas is, therefore, a reality from Israel and has a universal dimension, for all mankind. With that we can say with the Prophet Isaiah: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9: 5). And, with old Simeon, we can praise God saying that through Israel his light shone for the Nations, which by grace we who are part of the Nations have become heirs: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Nations, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2: 30-32).
My dear friends, I take this opportunity to wish everyone a Holy Christmas time and best wishes that the New Year will bring health, hope to all and that we can return to our activities of study and discovering God through the study of His Word and its interpretation from the Land of Israel in contact with the people to whom God revealed Himself and became flesh.
Jerusalem, Christmas 2020.
Br. Elio Passeto, nds
ISPS-RATISBONNE
Bat Kol-Christian Center for Jewish Studies
[email protected]
During this special period in which we celebrate the importance of light, from Hanukkah lights to Christmas lights, I would like to share with you a reflection about the incarnation of God, passing through Israel to the world.
First of all, I think that nobody could have assumed last February, that we would arrive in December this year in a situation such as the world finds itself. All perspectives, the most pessimistic ones at that time, did not predict what lay ahead. At the moment, after having seen so much suffering, loss of life, anguish, fears, and uncertainties, humanity is still inside the tunnel and the light that points the way out of the crisis has not yet appeared!
The celebrated start of the vaccine application, by several countries against Covid 19, seems to indicate that we are in the declining phase of the crisis. On the other hand, it is known that if the process follows its course successfully, it is still necessary to be patient and remain on the alert. In the best conditions, people will be protected, but not all at once and certainly many people will not have immediate access to this resource. It will be a concrete test of humanity- countries, organizations, and people - all of us, if we can learn some lessons from this catastrophe that has befallen us.
It is not a time to lose hope, but rather we need to look for strengths and motivations in our reliable resources. It is time to renew our projects oriented towards the other who suffers more than we do, who has fewer conditions than we have. It is known that the Covid-19 attacked the whole world, but not all were affected in the same way. There are differences in suffering. Many had their excess reduced while others lost their jobs, their only source of life. Many spent their time confined at home while others had no home to which to be confined. Many suffer, despite the treatments received, while others do not even have access to treatment.
Given that, the circumstances we are experiencing this year are different, and therefore our celebration of Christmas should be lived differently. It is an occasion for each of us to discover a new sense of Christmas.
The Word of God teaches us that in times when people go through difficulties, experiencing severe suffering, God becomes closer: God is present in human suffering. In Exodus 3, 1-6 God reveals himself to Moses from the middle of the burning bush. And the tradition of Israel interprets this passage as God who associates Himself with the suffering of the people of Israel in their slavery in Egypt and the suffering that would come in the future. Suffering is not caused by God, but He suffers with those who suffer, and therefore if humanity suffers God is in that suffering with people.
The people of Israel, throughout its history, have experienced God and God’s closeness. Every difficulty presented or experienced suffering, was an occasion to perceive the presence of God among the people. This experience of being close to God and feeling Him among them was transmitted through the prayer and teaching of Israel: “Had not the Lord been with us - let Israel say, had not the Lord been with us - when men rose up against us ... our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps 124). “Lift up joyful shouts, exult, O inhabitants of Sion, for great is the Lord of Israel among you” (Is 12: 6).
This historical learning of the presence of God has deepened the awareness of the people of Israel that the God who reveals Himself to them is the One and Unique God, there is no other, “there is no god besides me” (Dt 32:39), “For all the gods of the nations are idols”(Ps 96:5) Therefore, He is the God of all humanity and all creation. Primarily, God's plan is manifested by the choice of Abram to constitute a people (the people of Israel) and through these people to reveal Himself to all humanity: “and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Gn 12: 3). God's action in the world, it can be said, is conditioned by the promises made to Abraham and their development as seen in the lives of Abraham's descendants. This particular relationship between God and Israel is in view of the universal plan: God becomes known to all mankind through Israel, namely, Israel is an instrument through which God is recognized by the Nations. God's choice of Israel is about leading humanity to Himself: “I will also make you a light for the Nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth” (Is 49: 6). The fullness of all Nations recognizing the God who reveals Himself to Israel is at the same time the realization of God’s plan for Israel. For God, Israel and other Nations are distinct, with specific vocations, but both depend on each other. In the song of Simeon, when Jesus is presented in the Temple, which is the place of the presence of God (Shekinah), Simeon announces the final moment when the Nations all see the light, therefore, salvation has come to the Nations and as a consequence, he sees the glory of Israel, the people of God: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Nations, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2: 30-32).
Israel first has a responsibility to be God's testimony to the nations. Therefore, the salvation of the world depends on Israel, on its faithfulness to the Covenant with God, in the practise of His Word. This intrinsic relationship established between God, Israel, and the Nations has raised in the religious consciousness of Israel that God would be manifested in visible form, divine-human.
The so-called apocryphal books like Ezra, Enoch, which reflect a popular Jewish belief spread during the Second Temple period, describe this spiritual figure with divine powers and eternal duration. We also have in the book of the Prophet Daniel the figure of someone similar to the human but who comes from above and his power is from heaven and eternal: “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed” (Dn 7:13-14). The figure of the divine Child in Isaiah with absolute powers who perpetuates the seed of David is another example: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined ... For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Isaiah 9:1. 5-6).
The prophet Isaiah, who so contemplated the universal dimension of Israel's vocation, announced that the days would come when all nations would recognize and sing praises to the God who reveals Himself to Israel and to whom Israel bears witness: “And the Nations shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising. Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee” (Isaiah 60:3-4). We learned that in Isaiah's view, the Nations remain Nations and it is in this condition that they recognize God, the One God who reveals Himself to Israel.
In the same way, Isaiah foresees the particular way for God to manifest Himself, to be visibly in the world, being in the temporary reality of Israel’s history and from there to redeem history in its entirety: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanu-El (אל עמנו) God with us” (Isaiah 7:14).
The New Testament texts drink everything from these sources, from what is written and from what was an oral interpretation that did not reach us, but that we can perceive in between the lines. The Jesus event is primarily founded on the Jewish Scriptures and their interpretation. As Paul says: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (I Cor 15: 3-4). We also learn this, as another example, from the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. What gives authority in transmitting the truth of faith is the foundation in Scripture and not the descriptions of the facts that occurred: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God; As it is written in the prophets...”(Mk 1:1).
The Gospel of John begins with its final vision. Faith in the resurrected Jesus illuminates his birth. It is the experience of the resurrected Jesus that illuminates the reading of the Scriptures and the understanding of their interpretation that the people of Israel had developed throughout history: “And the Word (dabar) is made flesh and set its tent (Sukkah) among us and we have seen his glory, that glory which, as a unique Son full of grace and truth, he received from the Father”(Jn 1:14). The idea behind the dwelling as Sukkah evokes the end of time, eschatology: the experience that the people of Israel had during the Sukkoth festival: the moment to see God and be seen by Him as a great assembly of God's people with Him in a divine experience. John extends this experience of Israel to a universal and final dimension. The time has already begun, hope has already begun to be realized: the God who revealed Himself to Israel, now through Israel encompasses the universal. This Johannine theology is present and developed in the book of Revelation where the Sukkah takes its ultimate meaning because the author or the author's community was already seen as being at the end of time: “Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne will spread his Sukkah (tent) over them” (Rev 7:15). As we can see in the sequence it is the experience of eternal Sukkah and the fullness of Israel's messianic hope in its universal dimension: “Behold, the Sukkah of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God” (Rev 21:3).
In this period that we are invited to celebrate the birth of Jesus, according to what the New Testament teaches us, we have to take into account that our faith, the Christian faith is a post-Easter faith, post-resurrection. The theme of the birth of Jesus is not present in the first Christian writings, nor in Paul's letters or the letters attributed to him, nor in Mark's Gospel. This indicates that the communities in the first decades of the first century were formed in and transmitted the experience of the resurrection as the central and essential element. Then, over the years, the generation that did not live with Jesus felt the need to tell about His life, from the beginning. The transmission of lived faith in Jesus, resurrected by the Jews, men and women, that He is the expected Messiah and God made Man-Jew, filled the historical life of Jesus with meaning until his birth and much more. This conviction of faith integrated Jesus into the history of Salvation, according to the Scriptures, from the beginning of creation, passing through the call of Abraham and his descendants, in order to form the particular people of God and confirm the perpetuity of the House of David.
For this reason, the proclamation of the great mystery of the incarnation of God in history takes on its meaning and can be understood within the Jewish reality in which Jesus and his Jewish followers lived, where the experience of faith was combined with the Holy Scriptures and their interpretation throughout the history that was impregnated with the certainty of the presence of God that manifests in Emmanuel (God with us), also understood as the expected Messiah. The incarnation, which we celebrate as Christmas is, therefore, a reality from Israel and has a universal dimension, for all mankind. With that we can say with the Prophet Isaiah: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace” (Isaiah 9: 5). And, with old Simeon, we can praise God saying that through Israel his light shone for the Nations, which by grace we who are part of the Nations have become heirs: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Nations, and the glory of thy people Israel” (Lk 2: 30-32).
My dear friends, I take this opportunity to wish everyone a Holy Christmas time and best wishes that the New Year will bring health, hope to all and that we can return to our activities of study and discovering God through the study of His Word and its interpretation from the Land of Israel in contact with the people to whom God revealed Himself and became flesh.
Jerusalem, Christmas 2020.
Br. Elio Passeto, nds
ISPS-RATISBONNE
Bat Kol-Christian Center for Jewish Studies
[email protected]
