Word to the Wise
Friday, June 26, 2020 - Friday in the 12th Week in Ordinary Time
[2 Kgs 25:1-12 and Matt 8:1-4]In the tenth month of the ninth year of Zedekiah's reign, on the tenth day of the month, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his whole army advanced against Jerusalem, encamped around it, and built siege walls on every side. The siege of the city continued until the eleventh year of Zedekiah......[2 Kings]
The history of the Jewish faith, which we should never forget that we share all the way up to the time of Jesus and, to some extent, beyond, is marked by certain dramatic events. The Exodus is certainly familiar to us. A second event, described in today's first scripture, is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. We might recall that the Assyrians had tried to do this after they conquered the "northern kingdom" and failed. The Babylonians did not fail. They destroyed the city and temple and took most of the people into exile in Babylon, an exile that lasted over a period of 70+ years. It would take the defeat of Babylon by the Persians to result in a return that enabled the rebuilding of the city and the temple. The period and the Jewish faith are called by scholars, "Second Temple Judaism." Needless to say, the second temple had its ups and downs, especially in the period of Greek-oriented rule, which led to the Maccabean revolt. Herod the Great finally restored the temple - a controversial project that lasted 40 years - and that restored temple is the one that Jesus came to. But it was short-lived. The Roman Empire by Jesus' time had occupied the area and when a "messianic" revolutionary led a revolt in 66AD, which succeeded briefly, the Romans returned and utterly destroyed the temple. This last event meant the end of animal sacrifice as an act of Jewish worship and the reshaping of Jewish faith away from temple observance to synagogue worship, thanks to the Pharisees who survived and led the process. The gospels are marked by the destruction of the temple and how Christianity developed in the chaos that followed.
When one visits Jerusalem and goes to the "western" or "Weeping" wall, one can see part of the historical foundation of the temple. It is a very moving experience. Pope St. John Paul II, among others, made a point of going there to pray. This is a recognition that we must understand that Christian faith shares the history of Jewish faith, and that anti-semitism is a terrible sin, which resulted in the Nazi effort to exterminate all Jews!!! All those unpronounceable Assyrian and Babylonian names should not blind us to the importance of the events we have been hearing about in the daily first scriptures. It is our history, too! AMEN