Introduction: |
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glancing at this correspondence the thought will naturally arise as to who Mr. Isaacs
really is, and why the letters are addressed to him. Mr. Isaacs is a composite personage, made up of the Jews contacted personally and by mail during my years of union with the Messiah in His Mystical Body, the Church. The name was selected because all children of Jewish parentage, save converts to Judaism or descendants of persons who became Jews through conversion, are Isaacs in the sense of being descendants of the twelve patriarchal sons of Jacob, the son of Isaac. The Jews became the chosen children of God through God's promise that "in Isaac shall thy (Abraham's) seed be called" (Gen. 21:12). The divine promise was developed to its fullness through Judah (one of the twelve patriarchal grandsons of Isaac) in his descendants, King David, and lastly in Jesus, the Messianic Son of David. Isaac prefigured Jesus Christ in his miraculous birth; in being offered for sacrifice by his father; and in being a demonstration of God's power to "raise up even the dead" (Heb. 11:17). Hence Isaac embodies all that I want My dear Mr. Isaacs to know. These letters, though of a controversial nature, were written in a spirit of charity, which commands love of my fellow-Israelites for the love of God, irrespective of their philosophy, practices, and characteristics, among which is an intense hatred of converts from the Synagogue to the Church. Through these letters there runs an emotional strain due to an ingrain sympathetic appreciation of the pathetic lot of the Jews. Ability they have; so have they the zeal that enables many of them to be successful in almost any sphere of activity, in any country where they are not deprived of the right to exercise their natural rights. Everybody knows that the exercise of those rights is denied them in many instances. When it comes to social relations, there is a barrier raised that causes them to be segregated, even in our democratic America. The primary reason is dealt with in these letters to Mr. Isaacs. Yet a further word in in order. Hostility towards Jews is all too often due to lack of Christian charity on the part of persons who are Christians in name rather than in practice. Yet in the Jews themselves, rather than in unchristian Christians, will be found the primary reason why they "are underlings," as some Jews realize themselves to be. Sin, personal sin, is the source of moral affliction, and man is the soil in which it grows. The source of the pathetic status of Jews is just as surely sin as it is the basic cause of the "blood, sweat and tears" that is afflicting the people of the whole wide world during our present generation. This universal principle was stressed recently by His Holiness Pope Pius XII in these words, which we all should ponder,
Of this principle praying Jews are well aware, though they do not attribute it to the sin of sins, the denial of Israel's most sublime personage, the Son of David, their Messiah. He comes unto His own today, as He did twenty centuries ago, and His own receive Him not (St. John 1:11). A more uncharitable act no man can commit than to deny his kith and kin. Such an act becomes the sin of sins when it is a denial of the Prophet whom Moses told Israel to hear. The words of God the Father, that came to Israel through Isaiah twentyseven centuries ago, apply literally to their rejection of Jesus as their Messiah, viz. -
Just as David bemoaned the action of his fellow-Israelites, who stopped their ears to the voice of God, and foretold their punishment as a result of it (Ps. 57), so did the Messiah bemoan the deafness and blindness of Israel, and foretold the resultant affliction the Jews would suffer. This affliction Jews have suffered for nearly twenty centuries, it makes life hard for them today, and it will no doubt continue to keep them cast down until they salute Jesus as David saluted the Lord (Ps. 117:26), and as the Jews saluted their Messiah, with hosannas during His triumphal march through the Holy City on the first Palm Sunday,
There is a great spiritual void in the hearts
of many Jews that they long to fill. The Synagogue does not and cannot fill that void. It
causes many Jews to enter all kinds of movements with but temporary satisfaction, as only
a small percentage of them realize that in the Christian way of life, lived in union with
the Messiah, can be found the soul-satisfaction they yearn for.
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