'Blessed be the Lord God of Israel': the Prayer Book canticles, Holocaust Memorial Day, and the evil of anti-Semitism
On Monday coming, Holocaust Memorial Day, I will open my Book of Common Prayer to say Morning Prayer, as we recollect the deep horror and vile evil of the Shoah.
After the first lesson, I will say the Benedicite, from the text in the Apocrypha now appropriately known as 'The Song of the Three Jews' - the praises uttered by Ananias, Azarias, and Misael in the fiery furnace:
O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever ...
O let Israel bless the Lord : praise him, and magnify him for ever.
It brings to mind those who repeated the Shema Yisrael and declared the praises of Adonai even in the face of the unspeakable evil of the death camps. The God of Abraham is to be ever praised, even when thick darkness gathers, when deep injustice appears to reign, when death approaches. To pray the Benedicite as a Christian on Holocaust Memorial Day, is to be reminded that the Holocaust sought to exterminate the praises of the God of Abraham by the physical descendants of Abraham; that our praises as Christians flow from those offered over centuries by the Jewish people.
After the second lesson, there is the Benedictus, the song of Zechariah:
a certain priest named Zacharias, of the course of Abia: and his wife was of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elisabeth. And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.
To pray the Benedictus is to utter words praising "the Lord God of Israel", offered by a priest of the Second Temple; words he spoke in "the hill country of Judaea". Zechariah's canticle rejoices in "the house of his servant David", in "the holy prophets", and in "the oath which he sware to our forefather Abraham".
It is a canticle which beautifully, profoundly embodies the words of the Apostle quoted at the outset of this post; this is what it is to be "grafted ... into a good olive tree", to know the redeeming purposes of the God of Abraham.
At Evening Prayer, the first lesson will be followed by the Magnificat, the song of praise offered by the Daughter of Zion, rejoicing in Adonai "remembering his mercy":
as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed, for ever.
This Daughter of Zion had heard the angelic words, proclaiming that her Son would fulfil the hopes of Israel's prophets:
and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.
All anti-Semitism is a vile desecration of those who share the physical descent of Our Lord - "which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh" (Romans 1:3) - and the Blessed Virgin Mary. Those Jewish children, women, and men butchered in the fields of Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic Republics; those Jews herded into gas chambers in hellish places such as Auschwitz - these were, "according to the flesh", of the same stock, of the same flesh and blood, of the same descent from Abraham as Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin.
After the second lesson at Evening Prayer, there is Nunc Dimittis:
And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel.
Simeon's praises of Adonai were offered in the Temple, as the Christ Child was brought by His parents "according to the law of Moses". It is a canticle which again sets before us as Christians what it is to be grafted, in and through Christ, "into a good olive tree". Now we, at the evening hour, praise the God of Abraham, the God and Father of Jesus Christ, in the words of old Simeon, the words he uttered in the Temple, as he held a Jewish Child, who lived under the Law of Moses.
... for salvation is of the Jews.
Old Simeon: there is a particularly painful resonance to this portrayal on Holocaust Memorial Day. His canticle at Evening Prayer stands side-by-side with that of the younger Mary. An old Jewish man and a young Jewish woman. The same thing happened in the blood-soaked fields that witnessed the 'Holocaust by bullets'. The same thing happened in those dark, foul-smelling, despicable carriages which brought Jews to the death camps. Old Jews side-by-side with young Jewish mothers and their children, facing the darkest evil.
The canticles at Prayer Book Morning and Evening Prayer provide a beautifully rich expression of what it is for us as Christians to be grafted unto the "good olive tree" that is the Jewish people. In doing so, they challenge us to discern and reject the evil of anti-Semitism as a profound theological error, a denial of what it is to be Christian. The 2019 report by the Faith and Order Commission of the Church of England, God's Unfailing Word: Theological and Practical Perspectives on Christian-Jewish Relations, rightly described the need for Christianity to recognise the 'gift' of Judaism:
The Christian–Jewish relationship is a gift of God to the Church, to be received with care, respect and gratitude, so that we may learn more fully about God’s purposes for us and all the world.
The Prayer Book canticles are a means of us receiving this gift not only with gratitude but also with penitence, acknowledge the shame of Christian anti-Semitism - whether in past centuries, in the dark evil of mid-20th century Europe, or amongst those Christians today whose Hard Right or Far Left politics seek to excuse the sin anti-Semitism.
The canticles also have a quality of lament on Holocaust Memorial Day: a lament for those descendants of Ananias, Azarias, and Misael, of Zechariah, of Simeon, and of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who perished in the evil of the Holocaust; those who shared the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ our Lord, who like Him called upon the God of Abraham.
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel.
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