The New Israel

Extract

’Hath God cast away his people? God forbid! … Goo hath not cast away his people which he foreknew… Even so at this present time there is a remnant saved according to the election of grace.’ Thus wrote Saint Paul to the faithful at Rome: to those who had accepted Christ as the promised Messiah of Israel and the Saviour of mankind. For Christ did not found the Church independently of Israel but used the faithful of that nation in the establishing of it, as the prophet foretold: ‘For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make to stand before me, saith the Lord: so shall your seed stand and your name.’ (Isaias 66, 22.) During his lifetime he prepared his new Kingdom out of the material of the old, and if the old seemed to reject him it was he who in reality rejected those who refused to acknowledge him as Christ and Lord. So he had charged his Apostles, saying: ‘And whosoever will not receive you: when you go out of that city shake off the very dust from your feet as a testimony against them.’