Papst-Botschaft zum Pessachfest im englischen Wortlaut
To the Jewish community on the Feast of Pesah My visit to the United
States offers me the occasion to extend a warm and heartfelt greeting to my Jewish
brothers and sisters in this country and throughout the world. A greeting that is
all the more spiritually intense because the great feast of Pesah is approaching.
“This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the
Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as an ordinance for ever” (Exodus
12: 14). While the Christian celebration of Easter differs in many ways from your
celebration of Pesah, we understand and experience it in continuation with
the biblical narrative of the mighty works which the Lord accomplished for his people.
At this time of your most solemn celebration, I feel particularly close, precisely
because of what Nostra Aetate calls Christians to remember always: that the
Church “received the revelation of the Old Testament through the people with whom
God in His inexpressible mercy concluded the Ancient Covenant. Nor can she forget
that she draws sustenance from the root of that well-cultivated olive tree onto which
have been grafted the wild shoots, the Gentiles” (Nostra Aetate, 4). In addressing
myself to you I wish to re-affirm the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on Catholic-Jewish
relations and reiterate the Church’s commitment to the dialogue that in the past forty
years has fundamentally changed our relationship for the better. Because of that
growth in trust and friendship, Christians and Jews can rejoice together in the deep
spiritual ethos of the Passover, a memorial (zikkarôn) of freedom and redemption.
Each year, when we listen to the Passover story we return to that blessed night of
liberation. This holy time of the year should be a call to both our communities to
pursue justice, mercy, solidarity with the stranger in the land, with the widow and
orphan, as Moses commanded: “But you shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt
and the Lord your God redeemed you from there; therefore I command you to do this”
(Deuteronomy 24: 18). At the Passover Sèder you recall the holy
patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the holy women of Israel, Sarah, Rebecca,
Rachael and Leah, the beginning of the long line of sons and daughters of the Covenant.
With the passing of time the Covenant assumes an ever more universal value, as the
promise made to Abraham takes form: “I will bless you and make your name great, so
that you will be a blessing... All the communities of the earth shall find blessing
in you” (Genesis 12: 2-3). Indeed, according to the prophet Isaiah, the hope
of redemption extends to the whole of humanity: “Many peoples will come and say: ‘Come,
let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he
may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths’” (Isaiah 2: 3). Within
this eschatological horizon is offered a real prospect of universal brotherhood on
the path of justice and peace, preparing the way of the Lord (cf. Isaiah 62:
10). Christians and Jews share this hope; we are in fact, as the prophets say,
“prisoners of hope” (Zachariah 9: 12). This bond permits us Christians to celebrate
alongside you, though in our own way, the Passover of Christ’s death and resurrection,
which we see as inseparable from your own, for Jesus himself said: “salvation is from
the Jews” (John 4: 22). Our Easter and your Pesah, while distinct and
different, unite us in our common hope centered on God and his mercy. They urge us
to cooperate with each other and with all men and women of goodwill to make this a
better world for all as we await the fulfillment of God’s promises.
With respect
and friendship, I therefore ask the Jewish community to accept my Pesah greeting
in a spirit of openness to the real possibilities of cooperation which we see before
us as we contemplate the urgent needs of our world, and as we look with compassion
upon the sufferings of millions of our brothers and sisters everywhere. Naturally,
our shared hope for peace in the world embraces the Middle East and the Holy Land
in particular. May the memory of God’s mercies, which Jews and Christians celebrate
at this festive time, inspire all those responsible for the future of that region—where
the events surrounding God’s revelation actually took place—to new efforts, and especially
to new attitudes and a new purification of hearts! In my heart I repeat with
you the psalm of the paschal Hallel (Psalm 118: 1-4), invoking abundant
divine blessings upon you: “O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast
love endures forever. Let Israel say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever.’ .
. . Let those who fear the Lord say, ‘His steadfast love endures forever’.”