Piety Hill Musings

The ramblings of the Rector of St. John's Episcopal Church of Detroit. Piety Hill refers to the old name for our neighborhood. The neighborhood has changed a great deal in the over 160 years we have been on this corner (but not our traditional biblical theology) and it is now known for the neighboring theatres, the professional baseball and football stadiums and new hockey/basketball arena.

My Photo
Name:
Location: Detroit, Michigan, United States

Saturday, March 22, 2008

Good Friday Solemn Collects

Jesus Christ is the ONLY name under heaven by which we can be saved.

No one comes to the Father but by Him.

Basic teaching of Jesus, as found in the Scriptures.

Jesus' earliest converts were Jewish.

Many of the Church's earliest converts were Jewish.

Jewish people should not be discriminated against by not receiving the opportunity to be saved, which, as I started above, is only through Jesus.

And yet I read this in a Reuters report....

They protested against the re-introduction of the old prayer for conversion of the Jews and asked the Pope to change it.
The Vatican last month revised the contested Latin prayer used by a traditionalist minority on Good Friday, the day marking Jesus Christ's crucifixion, removing a reference to Jewish "blindness" over Christ and deleting a phrase asking God to "remove the veil from their hearts".
Jews criticized the new version because it still says they should recognize Jesus Christ as the savior of all men. It asks that "all Israel may be saved" and Jews say it keeps an underlying call to conversion that they had wanted removed.
Knobloch said that she could not envision a continuation of the inter-religious dialogue as long as the old prayer stands.
"The inter-religious dialogue has suffered an enormous setback because of this version and I assume that one will find a way very soon to continue the dialogue, but at the moment I don't see it happening," she said.
"As long as the Catholic Church, that is to say Pope Benedict, does not return to the previous wording, I assume that there will not be any further dialogue in the form that we were able to have in the past," Knobloch said.


Is it for those who are outside the Faith, to tell Christians how to practice the faith?
The Faith as given by Jesus Christ - who died for Jew and Gentile.
At the Name of Jesus EVERY knee shall bow!

From our Solemn Collects yesterday....
Let us pray likewise for God's chosen people: that the Lord our God may look graciously upon them and that they may come to acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord as the redeemer of all mankind.
Let us pray. Let us bow the knee. (Silence). Arise.
Almighty and everlasting God, who didst give thy promises to Abraham and his seed, hear, we pray thee, the prayers of thy Church that the people chosen by thee of old may come to the fullness of redemption. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.