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 Editorial
The Passover and
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Editorial
A Season of Hope
After a very harsh winter, we enter the beautiful spring season. With it comes the warm temperatures, the colorful flowers and the green grass. More important, April brings the two most sacred holydays for Jews and Catholics.
Our main article is dedicated to the Passover and Easter celebrations. Hopefully we will appreciate our common roots. Properly understood, both our similarities and differences can enrich our appreciation of one another.
A writer said, the two feasts link because they are both about a journey. Spiritually they speak of time in the wilderness, time for Jesus and time for the Jews. They parallel play, the way children work in a sandbox, together but separately.
Throughout his papacy Pope John Paul II has spoken about the strong bonding between Catholics and Jews. Passover and Easter should unite, not divide us in our shared journey.
At this time we are reminded about our Catholic-Jewish Relations: namely,
- God’s covenant with the Jewish people endures forever
- ancient rivalries must not define Catholic-Jewish relations today
- the Bible both connects and separates Jews and Catholics
- Catholics should not target Jews for conversion
- Jews must trust and respect Catholics on our new road together
- Jews and Catholics must work together to heal this world and bring God’s love to it.
To paraphrase Robert Frost, “…the road that was not taken”, then, the road of mutual acceptance: the road of Christianity providing theological space for Judaism, its parent religion; the road that makes the Jewish covenant at Sinai as legitimate and fulfilling as the Christian covenant at Calvary; the road that sees in the Jew not a theological rival or a sinister threat; the road that sees Jews as part of the eternal human quest for God; it is that road that must now be taken, if there is ever to be an end to hatred between Jews and Catholics. Rabbi Hilel said, “And if not now, when?”
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