The Kingship of
ACCORDING TO
THE PRINCIPLES OF ST. THOMAS AQUINAS
BY
REV. DENIS FAHEY, C.S.SP., B.A., D.Pa., D.D.
Professor of Philosophy and Church History, Senior Scholasticate, Blackrock College,
Dublin 1931
With Nihil Obstat and Imprimi Potest
THE WORLD STRUGGLE AROUND
THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD
Part 2
Satan.
Man's engineering and technical triumphs in modern times in the visible world tend to obscure our vision of the great spiritual struggle between Our Lord and Satan, Angels and demons, with man's free-will as the theatre of the combat. St. Paul did not allow the Catholics of his day to be under any illusion about the strength of the spiritual forces fighting against the members of the Mystical Body:
"Put you on the armour of God, that you may be able to stand against the deceits of the devil. For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. Therefore take unto you the armour of God, that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and to stand in all things perfect. Stand, therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast plate of justice. ... In all things taking the shield of faith, wherewith you may be able to extinguish all the fiery darts of the most wicked one. . . . By all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the spirit" (Eph. vi. 11-18). Satan's energy has not waned nor has his hatred of God diminished since his terrible overthrow on Calvary . There he got men to be his instruments to bring about the death of the Son of God, but his pride had blinded him and rendered him unable to grasp God's plan for the restoration of our Real Life of Grace through the humiliation and death of God the Son become man. He, proud spirit, would not so stoop. It was only when the awful crime of Deicide had been consummated that he saw that thus his own rule over the world had been overthrown. This, however, only redoubled his rage against Christ's members, and he is ever the head and leader of all the forces opposed to the supernatural life which comes from Our Lord. "Inasmuch, therefore, as men are drawn to revolt from God by sinning, they come under the government and direction of the evil one: he is accordingly styled their head" (IIIa., P. Q. VIII. a. 7). The leader, therefore, against whom we have to struggle for the Kingship of Christ is Satan.
Jews.
The Jews as a nation rejected Our Lord Jesus Christ, the True Supernatural Messias, and have never ceased to look forward to another Messias, who must of necessity be purely natural. Thus have they necessarily set themselves against the one order of things instituted by God, and have, thereby, become a force ever striving against the acknowledgment of the Kingship of the supernatural Messias and ever working for the downfall of that Kingship since it was accepted in the Middle Ages. The growth of indifference in religion hinders men from seeing the full force of this reasoning, that is to say, all the consequences of the unity of the Divine Plan and of the oneness of the world. The rejection of the True Messias and of the Church, the supernatural, supra-national society, which was founded by Him, and which respects the natural order in nations and individuals, can only mean the looking forward to the domination of their particular nation as a natural entity. Accordingly the worldwide power of the strongly organized Jewish nation, in international finance, in the Press, in the cinema-industry and in Freemasonry, coupled with their skill in becoming members of the different political parties everywhere, tends inevitably to the disruption of the whole order of things that was based on the Divinity of Jesus and to the establishment of their own supremacy as a nation. As this latter means the supremacy of one nation over all others. with the rejection of the Church. it will lead to the ruthless imposition of one national form, to use the Scholastic phrase; this spells disorder and decay for other national forms. At different times, in modern history, we have seen nations, which as nations had rejected the Church and were thus infected with this Naturalism, consider themselves entrusted with a divine mission to mould all nations to their image and likeness. The English, French and German peoples have at times shown themselves, to some extent at least, dazzled by the belief that they were the chosen people or race. Down to the condemnation of Jesus and His definite rejection, there was a chosen people, the Jewish people, but from Calvary onwards they must be spoken of as the Jewish nation. "Turn Thine eyes of mercy towards the children of that race, once Thy chosen people. Of old, they called down upon themselves the Blood of the Saviour; may It now descend upon them a laver of redemption and of life" (Prayer approved of by His Holiness Pope Pius XI, for the Consecration of the Human Race to [Christ the King] the Sacred Heart of Jesus).
In order, however, that we may be able to maintain the attitude of true supernatural charity towards the members of the Jewish nation, while resisting their efforts to overthrow the Kingship of the One True Supernatural Messias, an important explanation, based on the principles of St. Thomas, is required. We must distinguish carefully between the Personality of Our Divine Lord and His Individuality. Individuality, by which man is marked off from other men, from other beings of the human species, comes from the body, from matter, which demands a certain portion of space distinct from that occupied by others. By our individuality we are essentially dependent on a certain environment, a certain climate, a certain descent. Our Lord, True Man as well as True God, was a Jew of the House of David, born of the Virgin Mary, the Lily of Israel.
Personality, on the other hand, springs from the soul, and is, in the last resort, the subsistence of the soul. The personality of Our Lord, True God as well as True Man, is not merely that of a created soul: it is the Personality of the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity. In Him there is only one 'Ego,' the Divine 'Ego.' Hence the majestic proclamation: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life."
The Jews, as a nation, have continually refused to accept the Divine Personality of Our Lord Jesus Christ and so they refuse to accept the transcendent claim of the Catholic Church to be the Mystical Body in which He continues to live and into which all must enter in order to be one with Him and the Father. "What is Jesus to the Jewish nation at the present day? To the Jewish nation He can neither be God nor the Son of God in the sense conveyed by belief in the Trinity. Either conception is to the Jew not only impious and blasphemous, but incomprehensible. Neither can he, to the Jewish nation, be the Messias : the kingdom of Heaven (the 'Days of the Messias') is not yet come " (Jesus of Nazareth, by J. Klausner, Jewish Professor at the University of Jerusalem, p. 414). The natural Messias to whom the Jews look forward can only have as role the imposition of the Jewish Talmudic "form", on the world. Professor Klausner says, a few lines further on, that the ethical code of Jesus is "no ethical code for the nations and the social order of today, when men are still trying to find the way to that future of the Messias and the Prophets, and to the 'Kingdom of the Almighty,' spoken of by the Talmud, an ideal which is of this world and which gradually and in the course of generations is to take shape in this world."
The Jewish nation, down the centuries since Calvary, have not only rejected the Personality of Our Lord but continued to insult His Individuality by their calumnies of His Blessed Mother. But, thanks to that very Individuality, which, as we have seen, comes from the body, they are the nation and the race from which He drew His life-blood, which He poured out on Calvary for them and for us. Just as His Sacred Heart is wrung in an especial manner by His own nation's rejection of Him, so every effort and every prayer for the conversion of the Jews appeals to Him too. Our Lord's Sacred Heart is a human heart and He knows how the love of our own country, our own native place, and our own people causes chords to vibrate within us which no others can set in motion. Our own author, Kickham, in Knocknagow, touchingly expresses that love when he makes Mat the Thresher murmur: "For the credit of the little village," before lifting the sledge for the final throw. Our Lord wept over Jerusalem and used one of His most touching comparisons in order to depict His sadness at the obstinacy of His own. One of those who have entered most fully into the feelings of Our Lord in this respect was the Venerable Francis M. P. Libermann, C.S.Sp., called by God to be the nineteenth-century pioneer of the evangelization of the Black Race, Founder of the Missionaries of the Holy Heart of Mary, afterwards united to the Congregation of the Holy Ghost. Father Libermann was converted from Judaism in 1826, and died while Superior-General of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost in 1852. He is the first member of the Jewish race the cause of whose beatification has been introduced, and the heroicity of his virtues was solemnly proclaimed by Pope Pius X on 19th June, 1910. Those who have read his life will remember how Father Libermann's heart was wrung by his father's refusal to accept the Personality of Jesus.
It is well known that the Postulatum pro Hebraeis, drawn up and presented to the Fathers of the Vatican Council by the two Fathers Lemann, with the kindly encouragement of Pius IX, received 510 signatures. The interruption of the Council prevented this Postulatum from being discussed. While therefore combating Jewish efforts for the destruction of Catholic civilization and the perversion of hearts, we must ever strive to open the kingdom of Heaven to those true Israelites "in whom there is no guile" (John i. 47). Of course, too, we must distinguish between the leaders of the Jewish Race (Maiores Judaei) and the rank and file (Minores). In the case of the former, the rejection of the Personality of Jesus is more difficult to excuse. St. Thomas insists (IIIa. P. Q. 47, a. 6, ad I) that the excusing words of Jesus, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke xxiii. 34), were uttered on behalf of the common people, but not for the Princes of the Jews. The ignorance of the latter, the Angelic Doctor says, in the previous article of the same question, was affected ignorance (ignorantia at Jectata), for it was hatred that prevented them from recognizing Him as the Son of God. In this connection it is well to remember the principle laid down by St. Thomas (Ia. IIae., Q. 103, a. 4) in regard to the continuance of the ceremonies of the Old Law, after the destruction of Jerusalem: "In like manner, the ceremonies of the Old Law betokened Christ as having yet to be born and to suffer; whereas our Sacraments signify Him as already born and having suffered. Consequently, just as it would be a mortal sin now for anyone, in making a profession of faith, to say that Christ is yet to be born, which the fathers of old said devoutly and truthfully; so, too, it would be a mortal sin now to observe those ceremonies which the fathers of old fulfilled with devotion and fidelity. Such is the teaching of St. Augustine (Contra Faust., XIX) who says: It is no longer promised that He shall be born, shall suffer and rise again, truths of which their Sacraments were a kind of image: but it is declared that He is already born, has suffered and risen again: of which our Sacraments, in which Christians share, are the actual representation."
As the years go on and the supernatural character of the Catholic Church stands out more and more clearly, it becomes ever more difficult, for the Jews as a whole, and especially for their leaders and guides, not to see the Divine force behind the words once addressed to the Pharisees: "Therefore I said to you, that you shall die in your sins. For if you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sin. They said therefore to Him: Who art thou? Jesus said to them: The Beginning, Who also speak unto you. ... Jesus therefore said to them: When you shall have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that I am He, and that I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father hath taught Me, these things I speak. ... Jesus saith to them: If you be the children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill Me, a Man Who hath spoken the truth to you, which I have heard of God. This Abraham did not. You do the works of your father. They said therefore to Him: We are not born of fornication: we have one Father, even God. Jesus therefore said to them: If God were your Father you would indeed love Me. For from God I proceeded and came: for I came not of Myself, but He sent Me: Why do you not know My speech? Because you cannot hear My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do" (John viii. 24, 25, 28, 39-44). Here Our Lord proclaims the fact that all those who reject the supernatural, by refusing to submit to God's order, come under the leadership of Satan, who was the first to reject the supernatural. "The devil wanted to be like to God, but not in the way laid down by God, because he wanted his final end and his happiness to be in that which he could reach by his own natural powers. He thus turned away from supernatural happiness, which is the effect of God's grace" (Ia. Pars. Q. 53, a. 3). Satan was thus the first Naturalist and became the leader, so far as exterior guidance is concerned, of all those who revolt against the supernatural order. "It is in this latter fashion (by exterior guidance) that the devil is head of all men. ... To the ruler it belongs to lead those he governs to his own end. The end at which the devil aims is the revolt of the rational creature from God. Hence, from the beginning, he tried to get man to break away from obedience to the Divine precept. This revolt from God is conceived as an end, inasmuch as it is desired under pretence of liberty" (IIIa., P. Q. VIII. a. 7).
In recent times one can see here and there a movement amongst the Jewish nation towards the acceptance of the of Jesus while rejecting His Divine IndividualityPersonality. In the work already quoted from (Jesus of Nazareth, by Joseph Klausner), we read: "Jesus is for the Jewish nation a great teacher of morality and an artist in parable ... in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code.
. . . If ever the day should come, and this ethical code be stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism, the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time." Jesus is thus incorporated into Israel as only one of the great Jewish teachers of the world, and that is all. Again, we see the same tendency in the Report presented by Madame Eugene Simon to the Congress of Jewish youth at Geneva on 5th August, 1930, on the question How to struggle against conversions (to Catholicism) (Les Documents de la Vie Intellectuelle, December, 1930). Madame Simon, in her address to the Jewish delegates from almost every country in the world, amongst many other interesting things, said: "The Jewish religion, as it is (officially) taught, appears to them (our children) a something belonging to another age, out of date, incapable of nourishing the intelligence and of answering to the needs of the heart. If they have not a religious nature, they become unbelievers, and, in fact, quit Judaism. But if they have religious tendencies, how can they resist the sweetness of the words of the New Testament, which sum up, in a few pages, the teachings of our writings? The knowledge of this New Testament, along with the Old, has become a primary necessity for us in order to stem the tide of conversions. ... We have, then, in our modern Judaism, this dangerous lacuna, the ignorance of the Gospel and of the origins of Christianity. Our young people must understand that Jesus, on whom the structure of Christianity has been raised, was a Jew, that his finest teachings are flowers that have blossomed on the ancient tree of Judaism, that he lived and died a Jew and that he never denied the religion of his people in its pure essence, but on the contrary that he is, with Moses, our greatest prophet. Rabbins, like Leonard Levy of Pittsburg, Enelow of New York, and Stephen Wise in his sensational pronouncement, have shown that they saw this. The day that we shall profess this truth openly, we shall no longer have to fear the. Christian missionaries. Our young people will realize that Christianity is the offspring of Judaism and that we have all the truths it teaches. They will see that keeping our dignity as Jews, remaining faithful to our traditions, to our historical mission, we are much more in accord with the Jew Jesus than if we go over to Churches which are respectable institutions but which Jesus himself did not found. To struggle successfully against the movement of conversion, let us not abandon to the Christians the noblest fruit of our Judaism, but rather let us claim it strongly as our own. Thus we shall be better armed for the defence of our faith than by all the rites that are being abandoned more and more as time goes on."
May God grant that this acceptance of the individuality of Our Lord Jesus Christ may lead to the recognition of the central fact of the world's history, His Divine Personality! Owing, however, to the decay of belief in His Divinity amongst an ever-increasing number of Protestant so-called Christians these declarations of some Jews are liable to be confused with full acceptance of Jesus. Our Lord was put to death because He claimed to be what He was, God as well as Man. He wants full acknowledgment of His claim.
Sad, indeed, is the lot of the Jewish nation. They were meant to be for the world, as a nation, the heralds of the Divine Life. "Judaism, as it was, could not last, since it was only a stage on a journey. Its duty, when Christ came, was to abdicate into His hands, to be renewed by His word and His spirit, and thus to enter into a new way, which, however, would be in continuity with the old, as when a larva or a chrysalis changes form. ... By a flight of imagination we can see Israel acclaiming Christ, the Messias; its leaders giving the example, its pontiffs becoming the priests of the new dispensation, ... its doctors all becoming like Paul, teachers of the Gospel and apostles of the Gentiles. ... One cannot doubt that this was the ideal of Jesus. ... Alas! Jerusalem did not surrender. Only a few of her children without social authority recognized the things that were to her peace" (Sertillanges, O.P., Ce que Jesus voyait du haut de la Croix, p. 63). If only the Jewish nation had freely corresponded with the incomparable graces it received through Jesus, it would have been the herald of the Divine Life to a regenerated world, but it obstinately refused. Today, by its vast financial power over the world's processes of exchange and its widespread influence on the Press and cinema, it is placing terrible obstacles in the way of those who are striving to live that Life. Some striking passages from St. Thomas will make clear the meaning of these statements.
In his treatise on civil government (De Regimine Principum, C. I, c. 15) the Angelic Doctor points out that "two things are necessary for a good life. The chief requisite is virtuous action. ... The other requisite, which is secondary and quasi-instrumental in character, is a sufficiency of material goods, the use of which is necessary for virtuous action." Man is composed of body and soul. Accordingly, that the multitude of men or the average man, to express it another way, may be able to lead a virtuous life without being obliged to be heroic, the needs of the body must be provided for in suitable fashion. Now, "natural wealth is that which serves man as a remedy for his natural wants: ... such as food, drink, clothing, vehicles, dwellings and such like. Artificial wealth is that which is not a direct help to nature: as for instance, money. This latter is invented by the art of man for the convenience of exchange and as a measure of things saleable" (Ia. IIae., Q. II. a. I, c.). Money therefore as a means of exchange is meant to facilitate the obtaining by men of that sufficiency of material goods, or natural wealth, which is required to satisfy the needs of the body, so that the soul may be set free for contemplation. It is clear, then, that the manipulation of money or token wealth can become a terrible instrument in the hands of adversaries of the supernatural Messias and of the supernatural life He confers, by hampering instead of facilitating exchange. "The desire for natural riches is not unlimited, because they suffice for nature in a certain measure; but the desire for artificial wealth is unlimited, for it is the servant of disordered concupiscence" (Ia. IIae., Q. 2, a. I ad 3). The lust for power and control, thanks to the mastery of token-wealth, is such disordered concupiscence.
Efforts must therefore be made to bring about an organization of society in which the life of the people will not be subordinate to and at the mercy of Stock Exchange operations and financial coups by the few. Already, in the great Encyclical "Rerum Novarum," 15th May, 1891, Pope Leo XIII had alluded to the havoc wrought by usury. "For the ancient working-men's guilds were abolished in the last century and no other organization took their place. Public institutions and the very laws have set aside the ancient religion. Hence, by degrees, it has come to pass that working men have been surrendered, all isolated and helpless, to the hard-heartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. The mischief has been increased by rapacious usury, which, although more than once condemned by the Church, is nevertheless, under a different guise, but with the like injustice still practised by covetous and grasping men. To this must be added the custom of working by contract, and the concentration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, so that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the labouring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.
"To remedy these wrongs the Socialists, working on the poor man's envy of the rich, are striving to do away with private property and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies. They hold that by thus transferring property from private individuals to the community, the present mischievous state of things will be set to rights, inasmuch as each citizen will then get his fair share of whatever there is to enjoy. But their contentions are so clearly powerless to end the controversy that, were they carried into effect, the working man himself would be among the first to suffer. They are, moreover, emphatically unjust, because they would rob the lawful possessor, bring State action into a sphere not within its competence, and create utter confusion in the community." In the letter of Pope Pius X on the subject of the "Sillon," 25th August, 1910, the economic reorganization of society by Catholic action is insisted upon: "As in the conflict of interests and most of all in the struggle against unjust forces, a man's virtue, nay his sanctity, does not always suffice to assure him his daily bread, and as the social machinery ought to be so organized as, by its natural action, to paralyse the efforts of the wicked, and to render accessible to every man of good-will his legitimate share of temporal happiness, we earnestly desire that you should take an active share in organizing society for that purpose. find for that end, while your priests shall apply themselves with ardour to labour for the sanctification of souls, for the defence of the Church, and in the works of charity properly so called, you shall select from amongst them some men of activity and of well-balanced minds, doctors of philosophy and theology, perfectly conversant with the history of civilization, ancient and modern, and you shall apply them to the less exalted but more practical study of social science and when opportunity offers place them at the head of your works of Catholic action. However, let not those priests allow themselves to be led astray in the maze of contemporary opinions, by the mirage of a false democracy. ... Let them be persuaded that the social question and social science are not of recent origin ... that the Church, which has never betrayed the happiness of the people by compromising alliances, has no need to disown her past, that it is enough for her, with the co-operation of the real workmen of social reorganization, to take up again the organizations shattered by the Revolution, and in the same Christian spirit which inspired them to adapt them to the new environment created by the material evolution of contemporary society: for the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries nor innovators, but men of tradition" [Emphasis added by the Web Master.] (Irish C.T.S. pamphlet by Rev. P. Boyle, C.M.).
Control of token-wealth enables powerful Jewish financiers to wield enormous influence over the conditions of human life at the present day, but the very power they hold serves but to increase their blindness with regard to the Divine Personality of Our Lord Jesus Christ. St. Thomas's words concerning riches are thereby perfectly illustrated: "All material things obey money, so far as the multitude of fools is concerned, who know no other than material goods which can be obtained for money. But we should take our estimation of human goods not from the foolish but from the wise. ... All things saleable can be had for money: not so spiritual things, for these cannot be sold. Hence it is written (Prov. xvii. 16): 'What doth it avail a tool to have riches, seeing that he cannot buy wisdom?' " (Ia. IIae., Q. 2, a. I, ad I et 2). The one way to the acquisition of true wisdom is the acceptance of the Divinity of Jesus: "Jesus saith to them: Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner? By the Lord this has been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, that the kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and shall be given to a nation yielding the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it shall grind him to powder. And when the chief priests and Pharisees had heard His parables, they knew that He spoke of them" (Matth. xxi. 42-45).
It is almost unnecessary to emphasize that, when we speak of Jewish wealth we are speaking of the Jewish Kings of Finance, -----especially of the dozen or so of Jewish families who possess or control such vast quantities of token-wealth. Many thousands of Jews may be poor or relatively poor, but that does not change the fact that certain leaders (Maiores) and some thousands of lesser men (Minores) wield enormous power, through the possession of a large part of the world's gold and through the banking system. In politics, war, and peace, manufactures and commerce, their influence is far greater than most people realize. Their power over the Press prevents clear statements from reaching the ordinary man.
In what precedes, Jewish opposition to the Kingship of Christ has been more particularly stressed. Another current of opposition, originating in Jewish rejection of the Head of the Mystical Body, may be looked upon as directed rather against the Priesthood of Our Lord and the Divine Life He pours out on man. This has shown itself in the Jewish Kabbala, with its pantheistic deification of the generative powers of the human race. The Kabbala is the key to the symbolism of those Masonic and occultist groups which are such happy hunting-grounds of Satan. Behind ever so many efforts directed towards the propagation of nakedness and of all forms of moral corruption in the modern world is the Kabbalistic doctrines of man's divinity. Horrible as it seems to us, Catholics, whose supreme act of religion is the Sacrifice of the Lamb without stain, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, there are Kabbalistic secret societies which seek by impure practices to get into touch with the Divine. (Cf. Revue Internationale des Societes Secretes, May 10th and 17th, 1931, as well as Light Bearers of Darkness, Boswell, London, for documents.)
THE POSTULATUM PRO HEBRÆIS
The two Fathers Lémann, converts from Judaism, drew up a Postulatum to obtain from the Vatican Council in 1870 an appeal full of mercy to the Jewish nation. They secured the signatures of 510 bishops, and all the bishops present at the Council would have willingly signed, only that the Fathers Lémann wished to leave the honour of the greatest number of signatures to the Postulatum for Papal Infallibility.
One of the many touching incidents related by the Fathers Lémann in Les Causes des Restes d’lsraël, has a claim to be mentioned here, as it concerns the only member of Father Libermann’s Congregation then a bishop. “The composition of the Postulatum,” we read, “presented serious difficulties. But Father Libermann protected us and smoothed away the difficulties. ... We had reserved to Most Rev. Dr. Plantier, Bishop of Nîmes, the honour of heading the list of bishops signing the Postulatum pro Hebræis ... He had known of and encouraged our conversion, and he had always been our father and our friend . . . On our way to him, when the Postulatum was ready, we met Most Rev. Dr. Kobès, Vicar Apostolic of Senegambia, the only bishop then belonging to Father Libermann’s Congregation . . . He said to us: ‘I would like to be the first to sign, but the place of honour will be reserved to his Lordship, the Bishop of Nînes.’ ‘You cannot,’ he added, ‘refuse the signature I offer you, for I want to give it in the name of Father Libermann, our holy Founder in Jesus Christ and your brother in Abraham ... Thus the list of signatures of the Postulatum opens with the name of His Lordship, Bishop Plantier, but the first signature affixed to the document was that of His Lordship, Bishop Kobès.”
The prorogation of the Council interrupted the work of the convert brothers, but the reassembling of the Council will see the work continued. God grant that the appeal, if and when it comes, may be heard! Thus will peace at last come to Israel, and thus will a powerful impetus be given to the passage of the nations of the world to the dignity of children of Abraham by faith in the true Messias. This is what we pray for in the beautiful Collect after the fourth prophecy on Holy Saturday, after having begged God on Good Friday to withdraw the age-long veil from Jewish minds: “Let us pray, O God, whose ancient miracles we see renewed in our days, whilst by the water of our regeneration Thou workest for the salvation of the Gentiles, that which by the power of Thy right hand Thou didst for the delivery of one people from the Egyptian persecution: grant that all the nations of the world may become the children of Abraham and partake of the dignity of the people of Israel. Through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
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