CARDINAL RATZINGER: LEGACY OF ABRAHAM, GIFT OF CHRISTMAS

VATICAN CITY, DEC 29, 2000 (VIS) - Made public today was an article written by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which appeared in L'Osservatore Romano under the title "The legacy of Abraham, gift of Christmas."

The cardinal explains that at Christmas we exchange gifts in order to share in the joy "that the choir of angels announced to the shepherds, thus recalling the gift par excellence that God granted to humanity in giving us His Son Jesus Christ."

The history of the relationship between man and God begins with the faith of Abraham, father of the people of Israel, father of believers "and our father in faith." It is the duty of the chosen people, writes the cardinal, "to give their God, the one and true God, to other peoples, indeed in reality, we Christians are the heirs to their faith in the one God." Consequently, our gratitude must go out "to our Jewish brothers who, despite the difficulties of their history, have maintained to the present day their faith in this God, and who bear witness to it before other peoples."

The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith highlights that "right from the start, relations between the nascent Church and Israel were often conflictory. ... In the history of Christianity, these already difficult relations degenerated further, in many cases even giving rise to anti-Jewish attitudes that produced deplorable acts of violence in the course of history. Even if the last abhorrent experience, the 'Shoah,' was perpetrated in the name of an anti-Christian ideology that sought to strike the Christian faith at its Abrahamic roots - in the people of Israel - it cannot be denied that a certain measure of insufficient resistance to these atrocities on the part of Christians is explained by the anti-Jewish legacy present in the souls of no small number of Christians.

"Perhaps because of the dramatic nature of this last tragedy, a new vision of the relationship between the Church and Israel has arisen, a sincere desire to overcome all types of anti-Jewish feeling and to begin a constructive dialogue of mutual knowledge and reconciliation." In order for this dialogue to bear fruit, God must grant Christians "greater respect and love towards this people, the people of Israel," and at the same time He must grant that people "greater knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth, their son and the gift they gave to us."

Cardinal Ratzinger concludes his article by affirming that all we have and do "is a gift of God, obtained by humble and sincere prayer, a gift that must be shared between ethnic groups, between religions in search of the divine mystery, between nations seeking peace and peoples who wish to found a society in which peace and love reign supreme."

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