The title proposed for this brief reflection seems to express quite well a considerable interesting line in the Hebrew-Christian dialogue. During the post-Council years and, with increased intensity, during the last decenniums, the theme has been paid interest by various areas of reflection, both in the Christian churches and in the Hebrew communities.

The expression of the title “Consecrated life” refers precisely to the Religious Life, since the life of every baptised is potentially consecrated to God. The life of the “Religious” is said “consecrated” in a peculiar way, because it binds the adherents to live the baptismal life radically, with a particular bond in a progressive journey for the absolute and totalising search of God and God alone,  orienting the whole life to it.

“ With all our strength …”    (Dt 6,4-9).

In this definition, we find the first and large space of syntony with the Hebrew religion that wants to remain faithful to its roots.

It suffices to quote the profession of faith of the pious Hebrew, the Shema’: “Listen Israel: Yahweh our God is the one, the only Yahweh. You must love Yahweh your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let the words I enjoin on you today stay in your heart. You shall tell them to your children, and keep on telling them, when you are sitting at home, when you are out and about, when you are lying down and when you are standing up; you must fasten them on your hand as a sign and on your forehead as a headband; you must write them on the doorposts of your house and of your gates” (Dt.6,4-9).

This ardour of making the Word of God to penetrate the whole being, (with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength), has led some observant Hebrews to a life filled with the Word of God and the Christian religious to live a form of life wholly oriented towards the primacy of the Word, through a “constant prayer” or “a prayer of the heart” as well as an assiduous attendance to it.

In the Shema’ we find “with all your strength”, the strength spent for the exclusive love of God: to fulfil his commands and to accomplish His Will that he manifests. This is valid for the observant Hebrews, in a major of lower degree: either by living a “normal” life in the fear of God and in the observance of the divine law, or by making choices of such a life as it may leave ample space to study the Word of God and its commentators.

Many live in particularly observant zones of Jerusalem, which sometimes are places fanatically intolerant. Anyhow, if we succeed in establishing a personal relation with spiritually deeper Hebrews, we perceive a special syntony, a concord vibration for the great themes of revelation, a deep consolation in entering their houses dominated by that Presence: “…you must write them in the doorposts of your house and of your gates”.  

I still remember the remark of a priest, our brother, invited by one of these observant Hebrews  to his house: “I felt to enter a sacred edifice: the poor and sober house was carpeted with Sacred Books”.

The same norm of binding the precepts on the hand as a sign and as a headband, in reality corresponds to a desire of expressing to oneself and to others one’s belonging to the unique God.

All this can be found also in the religious life: in the important relation between work and prayer; in the care taken to live in places that manifest the presence of God; in the religious habit, external sign for self and others.

I have not underlined these “consonances” to attempt an assimilation, which would be false and approximate, the differences being really great and substantial. I want to say that there is a “place”  of syntony in which the Hebrews and the Christians can really communicate, provided they do not ignore and dissimulate the differences.

Fecundity and celibacy

In the religious state, the renunciation to earthly nuptials is a point that looks like a discrimination and somehow inassimilable for the Hebrew spirituality. In fact, the generation of children is so very important in it as sterility is considered a shame for a woman: for man it is almost a death, so much so as in the Bible there is the levirate precept, for which if a man dies without having had children, his brother has the duty to marry the widow “to the end of assuring his descent”. The continuity of one’s life in the children is considered a real survival.    

The generation of children is important for some Hebrews for another motive: the hope of being in the line of the generation of the Messiah. However, there are also some persons among the Hebrews who choose celibacy. It seems historically accepted that, in the community of Qumran, there are persons, both men and women, who choose it to devote themselves totally to the Word of God. A Rabbi would say, “What can I do if the study of the Torah has taken possession of my entire life? There others who will think of increasing the community of Israel!” These are far off and sporadic instances. It is still true that the renunciation to nuptials is fully comprehensible only in relation with Christ and with the future life, that celibacy anticipates already in this life.

The celebration of “sacred times”

Another deep meeting place with Hebraism is the celebration of the “sacred times”. The “ebdomadaria feast” for the Hebrews is Saturday, for the Christians it is Sunday; for both of them it is “the day of the Lord”, consecrated to Him. A day of rest to be free for prayer, for the study of the Word, for the cult in a different measure and form, for the works of charity.  

True, the “day of the Lord” today does not enter sufficiently the life of Christians, for which the testimony of the religious, who experience its mysterious power, can express the communion with the Hebrew world, even when the “sweet scent of Saturday” has its peculiarity in the way it is lived by the community of the Hebrew world. 

Easter and Pentecost, two major feasts for us as well as for the Hebrews, create deep relations, though they are invisible and not perceived in their major part. Our Easter, born from the Hebrew Paschal celebration, is the Eucharist, that was instituted in it and has very strict bonds with it. This relation is more manifested if we consider that for us Christians Easter is not celebrated only on Easter Day, but in every Eucharist: that of Sunday and the Easter of the week.

The feast of Shavu’ot (of the weeks) or Pentecost is less known. The relation is very strong also in it: not only because the gift of the Spirit has been given to the Apostles on this feast, but also for another important element. In fact, in the feast of the Hebrew Pentecost they read the Biblical story of Ruth, the foreign Moabite woman who sought refuge under “the wings of the Schekinah” (the Presence of God, the cloud on the Tend in the desert); on Pentecost day the announcement of the Apostles was listened to by the representatives of many peoples, each in one’s own language, and the Book of Ruth reminds it.

The prayers of the Psalms

Another “area for dialogue”, perhaps the most common one, without differences, is the prayer of the Psalms. In fact, they are the same texts, the same words, the same expressions to be recited or sung. A very attentive Hebrew thinker, respectful towards the Christian world, says: “Two millenniums have passed since the convents and the “ghettos” meet mysteriously in this “vigil of love” for the Latin and Hebrew Psalmody and hymns of the Israelite shepherds”. 

In some monasteries there is still the translation, dictated by St. Benedict in his Rule, and the prescription to recite every week all the 150 Psalms, as they do in the most observant Hebrew tradition. For both of them, the Book of Psalms is not a collection of songs and poems, but the book number one out of the Biblical books, in which there is a coherent thematic development.

This thesis is supported by some modern exegetes with convincing reasons, as well as by many Hebrew prayerful scholars.

Of course, this unity between Hebrews and Christians in the fundamental texts of prayer is somehow weakened by the choice made after the Council, because of comprehensible pastoral reasons, of omitting in the readings and songs, as well as in the written texts of the liturgical books, those parts of the Psalms that are less understandable by our modern and Western mentality. This may appear shameful to an observant Hebrew who has been educated to an infinite respect for the written revealed and sacred text, from which not a iota must fall, as Jesus says in his sermon on the mountain. 

The objective fact remains that the continuous reading and re-reading, proclamation and singing of the same sacred words, day after day, moulds our interior world. The mental and spiritual categories deriving from it and deeply capable of resounding in unison, create the premises for an ever more open and sincere dialogue, expression of the Holy Spirit, who acted in the person who wrote these texts and in those who read them. 

The reading of the Old Testament

This force of communion acts deeply also through an ampler reading of the Old Testament. It is not only the reading of the text that creates this bond, but also meditation and prayer on it, that can more and more avail itself of the contribution of the Hebrew study and meditation of the text. These allow us to fetch from a very rich exegesis, consenting us to cast solid basis, valued by an old tradition. In these comments we find a scrupulous attention for the original text, as well as deep and suggestive spiritual openings. Sometimes, in the oldest texts, not yet influenced by anti-Christian polemics, we find important Christological and new-Testamentary light.  

In this relation with the Word of God, whose reading, through the active grace of the Holy Spirit, is more and more recommended by the Church as the foundation of our prayer life, consecrated life can have a particular value in creating a space for dialogue, to which all the faithful are called.  

The messianic and eschatological expectation   

At the end, here is a hint for another “place of dialogue”: the eschatological or Messianic expectation. Perhaps, lately it has gone on weakening in some Hebrew area, while it has reached exasperation (also in a deviating way) in others, also in the Christian world on both senses.

Surely, the religious life anticipates the future realities (See: LG 44), but it is also called to be characterised by a particular tension of the spirit towards the return of the Lord, towards the new heavens and the new earth, in which justice will dwell, in which there will be the redemption of every reality, of the cosmos and of man. The cry of the first Christian assemblies should resound in our religious houses with particular intensity: «Maranathà! Come, Lord Jesus!”

If the observant Hebrews attend and invoke with ardour and tears the coming of the Messiah, a coming that will mark the disappearance of all the negative realities in the world: war, illness,  death, it is possible for us Christians tojoin them in invoking a quick return of the Messiah, no longer suffering, but glorious, the Messiah who will make everything new.

Agnese Magistretti
Piccola Famiglia dell’Annunziata
Via Casaglia, 75/7
40043 Marzabotto (Bologna)