‘Salvation is from the Jews’

11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
First Reading: Ex 19:1-6a
Second Reading: Rom 5:6-11
Gospel Reading: Mt 9:36 – 10a

This Sunday’s Readings make it clear that the Jews are indeed God’s chosen people. As St. Paul reminded the Romans, “Theirs were the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the lawgiving, the worship, and the promises; theirs were the patriarchs, and from them came the Messiah.”

“God formed Israel as his people by freeing them from slavery in Egypt,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “He established with them the covenant of Mount Sinai and, through Moses, gave them His law so that they would recognize him and serve him as the one living and true God, the provident Father and just Judge, and so that they would look for the promised Saviour.” 

In that covenant, God said, “Now, therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation.” 

What is “a priestly kingdom”?

The purpose of the Old Covenant priesthood, the Catechism says, was “to proclaim the word of God and to restore communion with God by sacrifices and prayer.” This, then, was to be Israel’s role among the nations: to proclaim God’s word and restore humanity’s communion with him. 

Only gradually, however, did God extend his self-revelation from the Jews to all peoples. For example, until his ascension, Jesus commanded his apostles not to visit the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but to go only “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” 

The Jews are—not were—God’s chosen people. “God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable,” St. Paul said. “This extraordinary people continues to bear signs of its divine election,” said Pope St. John Paul II.

True, God now extends “his gifts and his call” to us Gentiles as well, but he does it through the Jews. At Mass, we hear God’s word as he communicated it to the Jewish prophets and apostles. We have been reconciled to God and saved from His wrath because God became a Jewish Man.

Comparing the Jews to a cultivated olive tree and Gentiles to branches of a wild olive tree that have been grafted on, St. Paul says that it is only because the root is consecrated that the branches are consecrated. Accordingly, the Church cannot “forget that it draws sustenance from the root of that good olive tree.”

If “the Jews do not remain in their unbelief they will be grafted back on,” St. Paul told the Romans. “If you were cut off from the natural wild olive and, contrary to nature, were grafted into the cultivated olive, so much the more will they who belong to it by nature be grafted into their own olive tree.”

“Blindness has come upon part of Israel until the full number of Gentiles enter in, and then all Israel will be saved,” he said. Even now, he added, there is a “remnant” of the Jewish people “chosen by the grace of God.”

No one can boast that we were worth saving, St. Paul notes: when Christ died for us, we were all worthless sinners. Nor can we Gentiles congratulate ourselves on accepting Christ when the Jews rejected him. “If some of the branches were cut off and you, a branch of the wild olive tree, have been grafted in among the others and have come to share in the rich root of the olive, do not boast,” he warned the Romans. If you do, “remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.”

If we remain grafted on to Christ, we can, indeed, “boast in God,” St. Paul said—but we must not be “haughty” on that account, but “fearful,” for if God did not hesitate to “cut off” the Jews who ceased to “obey his voice” and “keep his covenant,” he will certainly not spare us.

Father Hawkswell has now finished teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. The whole course is available on YouTube in both written and audio form at beholdvancouver.org/catholic-faith-course and will remain available until the end of August. Father will teach the whole course again, with new insights, starting Aug. 30.

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