What makes me saddest of all is that what the Nazis did on them they now do on the Palestinians. They are not the first Nation in the World to commit genocide. I will grant them that. However they are the first people in the history of the world to do so whilst loudly claiming they themselves are the victims whilst committing mass murder themselves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Israel–Hamas_war As of 11 February 2024, over 29,000 people (27,708 Palestinian[1] and 1,410 Israeli[9]) have been killed in the Israel–Hamas war, including 85 journalists (78 Palestinian, 4 Israeli and 3 Lebanese) and over 136 UNRWA aid workers.[10][1
And I’m so terribly ashamed of Americans, especially American Catholics, who swear support of anything and everything Israel does and says, as if it were divinely ordained.
They will be victims, Padraig, until their conversion, but it doesn't seem to dawn on them that they bring their troubles on themselves. Moses Hess waxed lyrical about the Germans being the most advanced in Europe, followed by the French and English (I'm not sure but I think his pecking order had the Jews on top with Germans in second place. He's a hero to Zionists. They do this "exceptional" spiel and are baffled when it comes back to bite them. Now, they're calling Palestinians human animals after having treated them like animals for decades and now they expect the whole world to believe that the history of Palestine began last October. They need to learn that having powerful friends is a bonus but nothing trumps being on good terms with your neighbours.
Prayers for all the People of Israel. Very sad with what’s happening in Israel. But God has a plan. https://www.catholicsforisrael.com/articles/israel-and-the-church/113-holy-land-or-israel
I doubt very much that God wilfully plans genocide. His plan is for the conversion of the Jews which will happen after the full complement of Gentiles are received into the Church. Meanwhile, there hearts are hardened. Are we expected to ignore evil actions by the hard hearted? I think not. The baptised being grafted onto the vine and those who reject Christ detaching themselves from the vine is not replacement therapy. There is only one vine and nobody who rejects Christ is part of it. The Church is Israel. The first Christians were Jews. Baptism attached us to the vine, making us members of people of God - Israel. We're on the vine. Non-believers are not. Does that give us the right to break any or all of God's commandments with impunity? Have we the right to persecute and slaughter anyone who isn't on the vine? Pope Pius X had no problem using the name Palestine. The Holy Land is not just modern Israel. There are Biblical sites in other countries which are also part of the Holy Land - countries like Jordan and Lebanon. I wonder does the author have a problem with people who don't call those places Israel. I sincerely hope that he doesn't share Netanyahu's notion of a "Greater Israel" to be achieved by spilling the blood of all non Jewish residents. All those who are willing to pass off genocide as God's plan when they should be shouting against it from the rooftops would do well to consider how they would respond to someone "mowing the lawn" Zionist style where they live. I hope it never happens to anyone but were it to happen to any of us, would we be ok with people remaining silent because "God has a plan"? I think not. We may well be minded, as we gasp with hunger and thirst, our relatives being slaughtered all around us, to ask ourselves where we stood when the Palestinians were being genocided. Also, it was questioned above whether we can regard Abraham as our father. Was Abraham not the ancestor of Jesus and Mary? Are we not the adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus? Did Jesus not give Mary tomus for our mother? Did Our Lady of Guadalupe not remind Juan Diego that she was his mother? If Mary is our mother and Mary called Abraham her father, I see no reason why we can't call him Father Abraham. It's Lent. I need to take a break from the forum lest I'm consumed with anger at sanctimonious hypocrisy. Maybe all the very holy people here will offer an occasional fast for the famine stricken Palestinians. They're not Jewish but they are Semites and, most of all, they are human beings, created in God's image and likeness. Some of them are also on the vine -members of the people of God. We should, of course, pray for their persecutors and that God will shower the victims with the grace to forgive. I wish you all well.
That article was full of the anticipation of the conversion of the Jews. I feel as you do about the genocidal conflicts there and offer many prayers.
I think that God does not predestine any people to ruin, nor does he reject them even before their emergence. God made a promise to Abraham that he would also make Ishmael's descendants a great nation; unfortunately, the Qur'an diverted the Ishmaelites' gaze from God's promise by reversing the roles and saying that the son of the promise would be Ishmael and not Isaac, in addition to the verses of hate ordering the slaughter of Jews and Christians (who are also children of Abraham). Attacks on human dignity, even in the midst of war, must be denounced, both in Ukraine and Palestine. Churches turning into rubble (which is widely denounced by the user @Basto in one of the topics about the war in Ukraine) should cause our full rejection, just like what happens in Palestine.
Pope St John 23rd was so far sighted in his Encyclical, 'Pacem in Terris', was back in the '60's. He held that war , with modern weapons was no longer an alternative for humanity. That if we did not learn to get on with one another we would die together. That is the main part of what Our Lady, Queen of Peace has been saying in Modern Apparitions. Of the need for forgiveness, of how fragile peace is. How we head to mutual destruction as we head into a Third World War. I was just reading a prophecy from St Maryam of Bethlehem she peaks of a fireball over the City of Jerusalem. Our Lady of All Nations was back in the '40's spoke of armies of many Nations encamped around Jerusalem. https://missiomagazine.com/messages-war-peace-lady-nations/ Post-World War II Milestones in International Politics The Lady of All Nations’ apparitions had strong images and content related to war right from the beginning. As Ida described a vision in the spring of 1945, “Then I see a scene of people fleeing and moving away, and I am given to understand: that is the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. As the Lady points at that exodus, she says, ‘But Israel will rise again.’ Above the scene of the exodus, I see a representation of God the Father in the clouds. He is holding his hand over His eyes, and the Lady tells me, ‘And Yahweh is ashamed of His people.’”5 Yahweh was the name of God in the Old Testament for Christians and in the Torah for Jews. Ida’s vision was a prediction of the independence of the state of Israel, which happened three years later on May 14, 1948. Israel today is increasingly a secular state and few regularly worship God, a peculiar state of affairs for the chosen people of God. One recent Israeli government poll found that 42 percent of Israeli Jews consider themselves secular and some 25 percent did not consider themselves very religious.6 One could imagine that this secularism would be an offense toward God—for which he shields His eyes—and at cross purposes with the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people whom God rescued from slavery in Egypt in ancient times and Nazi Germany in more recent times. Prophecies Unfolding Today Prophecies from Amsterdam appear to be coming to fruition in the Middle East today as we speak. Ida had a vision of conflict embroiling the Middle East: “All at once I see Cairo clearly, and I get a strange feeling about it. Then I see various Eastern peoples: Persians, Arabs and so on. The Lady says, ‘The world is, so to speak, going to be torn in two.’ Now I see the world laying before me and in it a great crack appearing, a break winding right over the world. Heavy clouds are hanging over it, and I feel great sorrow and misery. I hear the Lady say, ‘Great sorrow and misery will come.’”26 The Lady of All Nations also warned of even more conflict in the Middle East to come. As Ida described a vision, “Now I see a round dome. I am given to understand: that is a dome of Jerusalem. I hear now, ‘In and around Jerusalem heavy battles will be waged.’”29 The dome which Ida saw is no doubt the Dome of the Rock which is a domineering and captivating feature of Jerusalem’s skyline, and the flashpoint of Israeli and Arab and Palestinian tensions. Was the Lady describing the battle of the Israeli war of independence that was then underway from November 1947 to June 1948? Or was the Lady prophesying about the 1967 Israeli-Arab war in which Israeli forces captured Jerusalem from Jordanian forces? Or is she prophesying about Israeli battles against Palestinians, Arab states, or even Iran in a future war in and around Jerusalem? An eruption of a future bout of warfare over Jerusalem might have been in the Lady’s warning. The Israelis and the Palestinians both lay claims to Jerusalem as their capital. But Israel controls the city, and the Palestinians do not yet have a formal state. Negotiations between the belligerents, moreover, are making no progress. Meanwhile, the militant Islamic wing of the Palestinian community, the Hamas, is gaining political and military strength and could one day move the Palestinian community to take up arms to wage war for Jerusalem. Neighboring Lebanon, too, harbors the Iranian-backed Shia militia called Hezbollah, which could join forces with Hamas in operations against Israeli forces in the political-military-religious struggle for control of Jerusalem. The old city of Jerusalem today is still surrounded by a wall with gates. The Lady might have been alluding to such a scenario when she warned Ida, “The gates are opening. The Eastern peoples are holding their hands before their faces in Jerusalem. They will wail over their city.”30
Throughout history, has there been any political plan to effectively place Jerusalem under the control of the Holy See, even with concessions to the religious freedom of Jews and Muslims?
Perhaps Cardinal Pizzaballa is someone recommended to resume this plan if he is elected pope in the coming years.
Doubtful. He wants a two state solution for the Palestinians. And the Israelis won’t let that happen after the Hamas massacre. There won’t be peace there for quite some time. A supernatural event of converting the Muslims and Jews is in my opinion the only way a peaceful solution can come.
IMHO, there is too much animosity on the Orthodox side. I just feel it. Can't prove it. People think that it's desirable, but the gulf is centuries old, and the chasm is wide.
As Catholics there should not be dissension regards the phrase 'salvation is from the Jews' For Our Lord Jesus Himself, tells us this in sacred scripture. John 4:22 You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. In Johns account of Our Lords discourse with the Samaritan Women, at St Jacobs well, we hear Jesus tell us that 'salvation is from the Jews' but He also alludes in this discourse that He came to redeem many non Jews. John 4 Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition 1 When Jesus therefore understood that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus maketh more disciples, and baptizeth more than John, 2 (Though Jesus himself did not baptize, but his disciples,) 3 He left Judea, and went again into Galilee. 4 And he was of necessity to pass through Samaria. 5 He cometh therefore to a city of Samaria, which is called Sichar, near the land which Jacob gave to his son Joseph. 6 Now Jacob's well was there. Jesus therefore being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well. It was about the sixth hour. 7 There cometh a woman of Samaria, to draw water. Jesus saith to her: Give me to drink. 8 For his disciples were gone into the city to buy meats. 9 Then that Samaritan woman saith to him: How dost thou, being a Jew, ask of me to drink, who am a Samaritan woman? For the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritans. 10 Jesus answered, and said to her: If thou didst know the gift of God, and who he is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou perhaps wouldst have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water. 11 The woman saith to him: Sir, thou hast nothing wherein to draw, and the well is deep; from whence then hast thou living water? 12 Art thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and his children, and his cattle? 13 Jesus answered, and said to her: Whosoever drinketh of this water, shall thirst again; but he that shall drink of the water that I will give him, shall not thirst for ever: 14 But the water that I will give him, shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into life everlasting. 15 The woman saith to him: Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come hither to draw. 16 Jesus saith to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. 17 The woman answered, and said: I have no husband. Jesus said to her: Thou hast said well, I have no husband: 18 For thou hast had five husbands: and he whom thou now hast, is not thy husband. This thou hast said truly. 19 The woman saith to him: Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20 Our fathers adored on this mountain, and you say, that at Jerusalem is the place where men must adore. 21 Jesus saith to her: Woman, believe me, that the hour cometh, when you shall neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, adore the Father. 22 You adore that which you know not: we adore that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true adorers shall adore the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeketh such to adore him. 24 God is a spirit; and they that adore him, must adore him in spirit and in truth. 25 The woman saith to him: I know that the Messias cometh (who is called Christ); therefore, when he is come, he will tell us all things. 26 Jesus saith to her: I am he, who am speaking with thee. 27 And immediately his disciples came; and they wondered that he talked with the woman. Yet no man said: What seekest thou? or, why talkest thou with her? 28 The woman therefore left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men there: 29 Come, and see a man who has told me all things whatsoever I have done. Is not he the Christ? 30 They went therefore out of the city, and came unto him. 31 In the mean time the disciples prayed him, saying: Rabbi, eat. 32 But he said to them: I have meat to eat, which you know not. 33 The disciples therefore said one to another: Hath any man brought him to eat? 34 Jesus saith to them: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, that I may perfect His work. 35 Do you not say, There are yet four months, and then the harvest cometh? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes, and see the countries; for they are white already to harvest. 36 And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life everlasting: that both he that soweth, and he that reapeth, may rejoice together. 37 For in this is the saying true: That it is one man that soweth, and it is another that reapeth. 38 I have sent you to reap that in which you did not labour: others have laboured, and you have entered into their labours. 39 Now of that city many of the Samaritans believed in him, for the word of the woman giving testimony: He told me all things whatsoever I have done. 40 So when the Samaritans were come to him, they desired that he would tarry there. And he abode there two days. 41 And many more believed in him because of His own word. 42 And they said to the woman: We now believe, not for thy saying: for we ourselves have heard Him, and know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world. 43 Now after two days, he departed thence, and went into Galilee. 44 For Jesus himself gave testimony that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. 45 And when he was come into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things he had done at Jerusalem on the festival day; for they also went to the festival day. 46 He came again therefore into Cana of Galilee, where he made the water wine. And there was a certain ruler, whose son was sick at Capharnaum. 47 He having heard that Jesus was come from Judea into Galilee, went to him, and prayed him to come down, and heal his son; for he was at the point of death. 48 Jesus therefore said to him: Unless you see signs and wonders, you believe not. 49 The ruler saith to him: Lord, come down before that my son die. 50 Jesus saith to him: Go thy way; thy son liveth. The man believed the word which Jesus said to him, and went his way. 51 And as he was going down, his servants met him; and they brought word, saying, that his son lived. 52 He asked therefore of them the hour wherein he grew better. And they said to him: Yesterday, at the seventh hour, the fever left him. 53 The father therefore knew, that it was at the same hour that Jesus said to him, Thy son liveth; and himself believed, and his whole house. 54 This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.
It is a Protestant interpretation of the Bible and putting people first, not God because it is interpreted literally, not figuratively as it should be. Romans 3:22b-24 (NIV) There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. It is like saying today that salvation is from Christians, which is what we believe. However, not because we are deserving and because we are something more special than others, but because God uses us to spread his news of salvation throughout the world. The center is Christ, not us as his followers. We believe that salvation comes from Christ, not from ourselves. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that the God whom the Jews worship is the true God because at that time every nation had many gods which they followed. This is the message, that the Jews believe in the true and only God and "salvation comes from the Jews"----> Their God... But it is a wrong interpretation that salvation comes from the Jews as a people. They are ordinary people, in the end Abraham himself was a Sumerian, when he had not yet met God. Salvation only and only comes from God, the Jews had a part of the revelation because God decided to reveal himself to them, however, because of their disobedience and sin, they were "punished" and God through Christ continued his plan for other nations but this time God revealed himself in Christ in the fullness of salvation. However, God keeps his promise and of course he will save the Jews, but God's salvation is not reserved for one nation, it was never even the plan, but for all nations. It is the reconciliation of God and man. God himself chose the way he would reconcile with man and decided to do it so that he would reveal himself first to one man, i.e. Abraham, and through the people who would come from his lineage, who would convey the message of salvation, reconcile the whole world. Isaiah 49:6 He says, "It is too small a thing that You should be My Servant To raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the preserved ones of Israel; I will also make You a light of the nations So that My salvation may reach to the end of the earth. Genesis 18:18 Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. Psalm 72:17 Then all nations will be blessed through him, and they will call him blessed. Isaiah 25:6-8 (ESV) On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. Romans 5:18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 1 Corinthians 15:22 (ESV) For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
The Jewish people were literally tasked with receiving the law and holy scriptures that lead to salvation, just as with their disobedience, they led the pagan nations to salvation through Christ's atoning death on the cross, which was the means God chose to literally Save the world. This is not a question of merit, but of predestination because God is sovereign and it is not up to us, sinners, to discuss his choices.
