[Salvation]

Friday - First Week of Advent

“She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21)

Joseph now learns that Mary is carrying a son. He is to be name “Jesus”. This is a shortened form of the Hebrew name, “Joshua.” It literally meant “Yahweh helps.”

As often with names, it also had a popular meaning drawn from a Hebrew root which meant “salvation.” It is this popular meaning that Matthew uses here – “he will save his people from their sins.”

From the very beginning and until the day he died, it was clear that Jesus came for sinners. This had particular meaning for the apostle Matthew whose name, some years later, was attached to this Gospel.

Jesus saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post. He said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him. While he was at table in his house many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples. The Pharisees saw this and said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mt 9:9-11

Jesus never backed away from the charge of eating and drinking with sinners. He responded, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do.” It was true then, and it’s true now.

I never have to waffle when talking to the Lord about my problems. He was born for this.

Spend some quiet time with the Lord.

[Salvation]

Saturday, December 4, 2004

Gerhart Reigner

In 1942, Gerhart Reigner was a lawyer at the World Jewish Congress when he learned from a German industrialist of the Nazi plan to slaughter European Jews.

Alarmed, Reigner sent a desperate cable to the U. S. State Department and the British Foreign Office, even detailing Hitler’s plan to use prussic acid to commit the exterminations.

But no one believed him.

“Never did I feel so strongly the sense of abandonment, powerlessness and loneliness as when I sent a message of disaster and horror to the free world and no one believed me,” Reigner later wrote in his memoirs.

After the war, Reigner vowed to dedicate his life to building bridges between the Jewish people and other religious (particularly the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches), so that the Jewish community would not be isolated…and at risk…again.

Reigner became the first Jewish observer to participate in Vatican II, and later John Paul II named him a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Gregory.

Reigner died on this date in 2001.

Eighteen months after Reigner’s telegram was sent, President Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board to try to save Jews.