(18 Apr 08 14.30) On Friday evening Pope Benedict XVI visits the Park East Synagogue
New York where he will gift a faithful copy of a page taken from an illuminated parchment
in the Vatican Apostolic Library.
The codex dates from 1435 and is of Italian
manufacture, probably from the city of Mantua where it was produced by the famous
scribe Isaac ben Ovadia who was unique among his contemporaries for his ability to
blend the characteristics of Hebrew and Latin manuscripts. It is a copy of an older
(13th-14th cent.) juridical work entitled Arba'ah Turim ("Four Columns"), the
title of which alludes to the number of sections into which it is divided.
During
an encounter with leaders of other religious in Washington’s John Paul II centre on
Thursday evening, Pope Benedict handed the text of a special Paschal greeting to leaders
of the Jewish community in the United States:
In his message the Pope says:
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’.”