On The Messiah (or, What I Have Written, I Have Written)

Unlike most Catholic bloggers, I'm not inundated with wealth for my literary efforts. As a result, I've been reduced to working for a living, lo these many years. Awhile back I was working at an Ace Hardware store, and a very peculiar thing which, at the time, didn't strike me as peculiar, occurred. I was manning the register, and a fellow came through the line to buy something or other, and I asked if he had his little Ace card for his little Ace discounts, and he said yes and showed me his card and I scanned it, like you do. I don't remember his last name and I obviously wouldn't mention it anyway if I did, but his first name was Chaim, which, because of the l'chaim dance from Fiddler on the Roof, I knew how to pronounce. So I said it and he smiled and said something like, "Well, you're either well-read or you're Jewish." And I smiled back and said, "Well I'm half-Jewish, I'm Catholic." And he paid for his stuff and left. He didn't say another word.

At the time, there was a line of people and I didn't really think anything of it beyond a sort of inchoate, eh, he's prob'ly in a hurry or something. And a bit later, when I looked back on it, I had a dim sense of, hm, I hope I didn't offend him or anything. But it wasn't till quite a bit later, when I read Chaim Potok's My Name Is Asher Lev, that I realized just how not innocuous and jocular my own Ace Hardware Chaim might have found my little remark. If you haven't read it (good book, you should read it), it's about a young Jewish kid in Brooklyn in the '50s who turns out to be an artistic genius; but, conflict-engenderingly, his father is a Hasidic scholar who thinks that having his son not also become a Hasidic scholar would be nothing shy of cataclysmic. This is made all the worse when Asher Lev begins to study the European masters and his father finds him painting scenes of the Crucifixion. He tries to explain that he's only painting it because it's so culturally important; but to his father, "that man" is the wellspring of pogroms and holocausts.

Salvation is from the Jews. As a Catholic, I must and do believe that because, well, it kind of got said by Jesus. We love Jews. Mary's Jewish. But! She's also not Jewish, because she's no longer practicing. She's no longer waiting for the Messiah. Elijah, borne up to Heaven in the raddest possible way—Moses, Abraham, all the prophets and patriarchs freed in the Harrowing of Hell—St. Joseph, John the Baptist, Joachim and Anne, all the mighty Jewish saints of old now reveling in Heaven: not Jews. Not anymore. Or rather, not just Jews. Fulfilled Jews, Ascended Jews. Jews who have become what they became Jews in order to be. And if, God willing, I make it to Heaven some day, I too will be an Ascended Jew. I can't be Catholic except through having been Jewish (if only by inheritance). Just as one can't be a black belt without being a brown belt, or hold a Doctorate without holding a Master's, or become a bishop without having been a priest.

Now if I were Jewish and I read the preceding paragraph, I suspect I would feel that some smug schmendrick was patting me on the head, and that I should like to punch him in his teeth. I get that. Thing is. There's a lot of scientific theories out there, on any scientific topic you care to think of. How many people tried to explain gravity before Newton. No one contests that there is one single correct answer to the question, and that everyone else is actually, factually wrong. And yet when it comes to the ultimate reality of the universe, the wellspring of all scientific fact, we tend to metamorphose into amoebae. There's no one single truth, there's no correct philosophy or religion, we must simply squish ourselves into whatever shape will be least offensive to whomever we're talking to.

But there is a Truth. If I didn't think it was Catholicism, I wouldn't be Catholic. If I didn't think my religion was actually, factually correct and that the other ones are all, in varying degrees, wrong—I wouldn't be here. I absolutely think the pagans have bits of the truth. I think the stoics and the scientists and Buddhists and Muslims and everyone who seeks the truth, is seeking Christ and has therefore to some extent found Him. I think the Jews are the closest of all to the fullness of truth. But the Truth has already come to them. They aren't quite ready to see Him yet, and that's honestly okay with me because the Conversion of the Jews is one of the signs of the End Times. When that comes, the Messiah debate is over. But some vast Good Friday awaits the Earth before that second Easter. For now: