Abstinence, Fish, Pork, the Jews, and the Antichrist. What could they possibly have in common?

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Abstinence, Fish, Pork, the Jews, and the Antichrist. What could they possibly have in common?

The Conversion of the Jews: a Theological Theory

In brief, the Prefiguring Covenant uses material PICTURES of what really matters, INNER RENEWAL, to point to their fulfillments, in part because, as we have seen, humanity in infancy is still very much attached to the material order, and needs illustration before abstractions, much like the child who must learn through the very same pictures before they graduate to written word without images. And yet, we see, these “pictures” in this Prefiguring Covenant are NOT salvific of their own sense, they only POINT to what is salvific. Examples: the LITERAL Holy Land of Israel is not an end unto itself, in that, it only POINTS to the true land of fulfillment, the SPIRITUAL Kingdom of God in the NT and, ultimately, HEAVEN. The LITERAL lamb of sacrifice for Passover is not a true, intrinsic atonement. Only GOD HIMSELF, taking on flesh and suffering in it, the SPIRITUAL Lamb of God, is the true atonement. God heals the People from LITERAL serpent bites in the desert, but in the New Covenant, he heals the People of God from the SPIRITUAL serpent’s bite, SIN!

And so, we anticipate in any material world, when God Incarnates Himself to the Prefiguring People, and unfolds these mysteries, it is INSULTING and WOUNDING to the Prefiguring People. You mean that you only gave us PICTURES? We are only a SEED People, as prelude to men of ALL nations? And all this time, you have told us of your UNICITY as One God, and now you tell us there is FAMILY of PERSONS in Your One Nature to Exist? And that ONE DIVINE PERSON has become GOD? You have told us you are only ONE, and that NO MAN CAN BE GOD! Blasphemy, we cannot take it.

Hence, the Prefiguring People remain attached to the pictures, and reject the FULFILLMENT. Hence, they fail to see what the pictures pointed to: From PHYSICAL blessings, to SPIRITUAL RENEWAL. In the end, even if you are in a PHYSICAL land of milk and honey, only the SPIRITUAL ecstasy of heaven, the ETERNAL milk and honey that flows from God Himself, can satiate your desire.

In the end, it is not that a particular ANIMAL is unclean, it is rather that you must not partake of the what is SPIRITUALLY unclean. In the end, no mere animal, which can neither suffer insult nor spiritual pain that you cause Me, can atone for what is INFINITELY offensive to PRICELESS human dignity, and IMMEASURABLE love! Hence, only I, your Maker, can make up for your sin.

And YET!!!, The People of Prefiguring still walked by GRACE, hence, they DID, HISTORICALLY journey in HOLINESS, in GRACE, the SPIRITUAL PATH of the saint. Hence, WITHIN THEIR VERY HISTORY, the SEED OF THE MYSTERY exists. And Incarnate One fulfills in His Flesh, this process. His five wounds fill up the infinite pain that merits the five substages of inner renewal:
  1. The dark night of the senses, purgation
  2. The light of the illuminative way of light
  3. The dark night of the soul
  4. The untive way of light
  5. Martyrdom
Yet, seeing so many of their details and journey fullfilled in CHRIST’S Flesh, they are NOT able to see it.

BUT, the People of NEW, of INCARNATE One, WILL walk this path, they willl FILL UP IN THEIR FLESH WHAT IS LACKING IN THE SUFFERINGS of Christ.

More specifically, we have seen the echoing and mirror of the history of the Jews and the Church:

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The Purgative Way

i. The flesh of the dark night of the senses is fulfilled historically in the world and its tendencies. For no sooner does God form the Covenant People, than that they shall flourish. But the spirit of the world, driven according to pride and selfish ambition, sees the blessings upon God’s children as a threat to their material dominion, and so naturally reacts against them, which is to say, to either oppress them (as Egypt did to the Jews through Enslavement), or persecute them (as pagan Rome did to the Catholic Church). Hence, the sting of persecution is the on God’s Holy People fulfills the individual saint’s purgation, or dark night of the senses.

The Illuminative Way

ii. But behold the dark night eventually ends, for just as the saint eventually conquers the greater resistance of the flesh, which is to say, his greater sinful tendencies are conquered and cast out, so the oppression and/or persecution of the world on God’s People ends, and the People of God are freed or delivered from the more severe sting of the world’s resistance.

The OT fulfillment of this was the deliverance of the Jews in the Exodus from Egypt and to the Promised Land.

The NT fulfillment was the conquering of Christianity over pagan Rome, which eventually transformed the continent of Europe into a Catholic civilization.

Hence do the People of God enter the Illuminative Way, which is to say, the development of the contemplation of the Divine Revelation of the Covenant.

For the OT, this is the Old Law and the Age of the Prophets, who develop the application of the Law unto the Prefigured People, who grow in intimacy with God.

In the NT, it is the doctrinal development of the Church, where she contemplates the Deposit of Faith more deeply, and draws forth the fuller implications of what Christ and the Apostles left Her.

But behold, just as the flesh of the saint resists the incoming Spirit, so the outside world becomes colder to the depths of the Saint’s intimacy in truth with God, so that darkness in various punctuated manifestations progresses toward the dark night of the soul, when the whole Deposit of Revelation seems a lie, that the Divine Consolation is utterly taken away. So then also is this for the just of the Covenant People.

In the OT, it is the prophets who are the just, whose intimacy in depth of the Law grows with God, while the Jews on the outside of them grow colder and more deaf to the imploring of the prophets. So then, just before the vindication of their Revelation, there is the dark night, when all the Jews scoff at the righteous preachers of the Old Law, holding in contempt the totality of their witness. For behold, the fallen nature causes those to whom is presented the deeper Revelation to question it, the spirit of anti-Baptism, which more and more refuses to accept the light of God’s truth and refuses more and more to obey, so that, in the climax of the dark night of the soul, the people are utterly in denial of the Divine truth and will, having turned to anti-Baptism, and living only for this world, spiritual anti-Marriage.

In the NT, it is the just of the Church herself, especially the Magisterium, that fulfills the role of the saint. For as the Church develops the Deposit, so the outside Gentiles grow harsher in their relationship, progressively rejecting more of the Deposit of Faith, becoming ever more in the spirit of anti-Baptism, culminating in an apostasy and a return to the second lie of the fallen nature, the pursuit of a material, utopia-like dominion independent of God.

The Unitive Way

iii. But just as the saint’s dark night of the soul ends, and the Divine Consolations return, which is to say, the vindication of the Divine Truth developed and contemplated, so also does a chastisement on the unjust vindicate the words of the just of the People of God, so that the Jews repented in the exile and turned their hearts back to God.

In likewise fashion, are the Gentiles carried away into the exile of the consequences of their sins, where they repent and return to the Church.

And so ushers in the unitive way for the People of God.

For after the Jewish exile, idolatry was mostly rooted out of her. She walked with God in peace under pagan rule until the final cross, the martyrdom of Antiochus, the OT Antichrist who enforced an apostasy. And this stage of utter persecution was the final historical book of Divine Revelation until the Coming of the Messiah, which began a new age, which crossed the threshold of a dispensation, from Old to New, just as after literal martyrdom, the saint enters the next age, heaven.

In regards to the NEW Covenant, the Catholic mystics prophesy that after the current dark night of intermediate apostasy, the Gentiles shall repent, Christians shall be reunited, and the world restored to Catholicism, the age of peace. Finally, after this great age of light, when the Gentiles shall fully walk with God in the New Covenant, so it shall disolve into the great apostasy, when the Church shall pass through the ultimate martyrdom, the persecutions of the NT Antichrist, after which all humanity shall cross the threshold of this age into the next, the eternity of the New Creation.

So it is that the People of both Old and New walk the path of the saint.

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And hence, the farther the People of Incarnate One, of NEW, journey in this path, the more the Prefiguring People recognize a sign of THEIR spiritual stages before Jesus. And, then, reaching the apex in NT martyrdom of NT Antichrist, fulfilling OT Antichrist Antiochus, they see the ultimate deja vu, and accept the Gospel!

“Only when I have placed my hands in HIS WOUNDS [five, see the five subages of MY walk with God prior to Christ fullfilled in the five subages of the NEW People], shall I believe!”

An End-times conjecture:

To restate, we see that as the Church enters the final age of her history, the Great Apostasy and NT Antichrist, it is this final stage of fulfillment of Jewish History that opens the eyes of the Jews to see that the Gentiles and Catholic Church will have arrived at the very same point that the Jews were, spiritually speaking, just before the Messiah came the first time.

And how? Well, simple. In Maccabbees, the final history of the Jews, a blasphemous Gentile attempted to force apostasy on the Jews or else face brutal torture and death. Further, this horrendous ruler, Antiochus, was called Epiphanies because He claimed deity.

Now consider the plight of the Catholic Church just prior to Christ’s Second Coming. Firstly, we can note that some Fathers foresee the NT Antichrist as being himself a secular Jew. Consider, therefore, assuming such a scenario, how the tables are turned: A merely Secular Jew attempting to impose on a minority of Gentiles apostasy from the New Covenant [Catholicism] or else face torture and death.

From this scenario, I pose a great Divine Joke that the Successor of St. Peter shall play, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to hasten in the conversion of the most stubborn people on earth, the Jews.

Now, we must recall that on many occasions in Maccabbees, the OT Antichrist Antiochus would use the temptation of pork , a forbidden meat to the Jews, to seduce apostasy, in that, on one occasion, Antiochus horrifically tortured seven brothers before their mother because they refused to partake of the forbidden meat.

Now, here, of course, is the irony, and one of the central questions the Jews do not understand: God’s division of animals into clean and unclean was merely ceremonial and a primary aspect of God using material things to foreshadow the spiritual. For in the future Acts of the Apostles, Christ appears to St. Peter in a vision with many “unclean” [by the Old, Mosaic Law] animals, and is commanded to kill and eat. Peter exclaims, “But, Lord, these are unclean.” Christ responds, “There is nothing unclean that I have not declared unclean.” The connotation is that, in the end, no one animal on earth is any more unclean than another, INTRINSICALLY. What truly matters, as was intended to be revealed in the New, is the inner heart of a man. For, in the end, it is not those who are physically clean who shall enter heaven, but only those who are spiritually clean, in the state of love.

Hence, as the apostle repeatedly points out, it is a faith that loves God in the heart that truly matters, and not mere external rituals.

For this reason, can we not foresee the Papacy to give a final revelation to the Jews, a little puzzle to figure out: He shall change (because it is discipline, which is mutable) the Friday penance, so that Catholics can ONLY eat PORK on Friday, and no OTHER meat.

Now think of the humor of this, foreseeing the reaction of the NT Antichrist, a wicked secular Jew who understands the New Covenant but rejects it for fruitless rituals. He, therefore, shall persecute the Christians on Friday as follows:

He shall lay out before the Catholic to be tortured all the meats of all CLEAN species in the Old Law, and command the Christian, one by one, to eat them. At each step, if the Catholic refuses, the men of antichrist shall exercise a brutal torture. And having refused to consume all of them, the Catholic will be killed.

Of course, since Catholics can partake of ANY meat on any other day, the Antichrist will torture only according to dogma on the other days apart from Friday, going down all dogmatic declarations of the Church with respective tortures, just as he does with the meats on Friday.

The Jew will, of course, consider this scenario with utter amazement. He says to himself:

"See these Gentiles, on Fridays, the ruler of this world does not ask them to eat anything unclean, and yet they refuse to the consequence of horrible torture. And yet, if they were asked to eat the supremely unclean meat, they would gladly. This is absurd.

“And even beyond this, this is only FRIDAYS, which is no special day. Whereas on other days, he eats as he pleases, clean and unclean alike. Who are these hypocrites? And yet, on all other days, they pass through sufferings incomprehensible, and over what, matters of SPIRITUAL doctrine!?”

And if the Jews can sort out this little puzzle, they will have solved the mystery of the world that God would make and redeem, leading a first group into some revelation, but who shall accept the fullness of such only as last, and a last group into some revelation, but the first to take it all in fullness!
 
The external rituals found in Judaism are not meant as an end in themselves, as it appears you interpret them, but as a physical means to a spiritual end, just as the rituals found in Catholicism point toward a spiritual end. The maintenance of and adherence to the commandments in the Torah are thus interpreted as graces which serve to sanctify the mundane aspects of earthly life, such as eating (dietary practices with regard to type and preparation of food), manner of dress (as a sign of humility and reverence for G-d), work (interpersonal ethical behavior in business relationships), kind treatment toward animals (feeding our pets before ourselves, killing of animals for food by means of inflicting the least pain, hunting for sport regarded as cruelty to animals), respect afforded toward the deceased in burial (simplicity of casket, cleansing of body without embalming fluids, walking around the deceased during the cleansing process rather than passing instruments over their body), and so on. These rituals are designed to teach us love for G-d, for our fellow human, and for the non-human creatures G-d created, throughout our daily life. Judaism places great emphasis on MORAL BEHAVIOR even more than in faith since behavior is considered faith in action. (This is not too different from the teaching in Catholicism.) Even when we are too lazy or angry or sad to comply with the commandments, we are taught to do so anyway, rather than be ruled by our emotional moods of the moment. By means of such behavior, we may even come to change our negative moods and thoughts for the better.
 
meltzerboy said:
The external rituals found in Judaism are not meant as an end in themselves, as it appears you interpret them, but as a physical means to a spiritual end, just as the rituals found in Catholicism point toward a spiritual end. The maintenance of and adherence to the commandments in the Torah are thus interpreted as graces which serve to sanctify the mundane aspects of earthly life, such as eating (dietary practices with regard to type and preparation of food), manner of dress (as a sign of humility and reverence for G-d), work (interpersonal ethical behavior in business relationships), kind treatment toward animals (feeding our pets before ourselves, killing of animals for food by means of inflicting the least pain, hunting for sport regarded as cruelty to animals), respect afforded toward the deceased in burial (simplicity of casket, cleansing of body without embalming fluids, walking around the deceased during the cleansing process rather than passing instruments over their body), and so on. These rituals are designed to teach us love for G-d, for our fellow human, and for the non-human creatures G-d created, throughout our daily lives. Judaism places great emphasis on MORAL BEHAVIOR even more than in faith since behavior is considered faith in action. (This is not too different from the teaching in Catholicism.) Even when we are too lazy or angry or sad to comply with the commandments, we are taught to do so anyway, rather than be ruled by our emotional moods of the moment. By means of such behavior, we may even come to change our negative moods and thoughts for the better.
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