«This reproachfulness is neither total nor perpetual. If God is Justice, He is also Mercy. And the proof of this Mercy is having made of His Word, the Lamb destined to the sacrifice for the redemption of men.
So for this reason, not all of Israel was reproached. Because not all of Israel was wicked. As in every human society, even in Israel, there were just ones. The most just amongst them understood, followed and loved Christ from the moment they first met Him. Others, who were less simple and less just, waited to have powerful proofs in order to believe that He was the Messiah, and still others were shaken only by the greatest miracles (the resurrection and ascension). Finally, some yielded only when they saw the Apostles, uncouth and unlearned, turn into evangelizers full of dignity and wisdom, becoming courageous where before they were fearful, into workers of miracles like their Master, and above all, highly resolute in faith so as to be able to oppose the Sanhedrin by answering, one by one, to the unjust injunctions of the same, "If it be right in the sight of God to obey you rather than God, you judge. Of our own account, we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard. (Acts c. IV, v.19-20) We ought to obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you killed by hanging Him on the cross. God exalted Him at His right hand as Leader and Saviour in order to give repentance and remission of sins to Israel. And we are witnesses [of these things] and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey Him." (Acts c. V, v.29-32)
And the most just ones amongst the heads of Israel, one of them being Gamaliel, the greatest amongst the rabbis of that time, then converted to the Lord Jesus. Because not everything of man and in man is wicked, even if he is not just in everything. Original sin and the sins of the triple concupiscence do not destroy everything which is of God in man, that is, everything that is of a good tendency of the incorporeal part (the spirit and the intellect). Reason, which only dementia can completely annul, is always able to open the way of truth and justice by illuminating these to men so that, making good use of their free wills, they receive as much as they had at the beginning openly renounced or had difficulty receiving, by recognizing it as true and good and as a means in order to go towards the Truth.
The others of Israel, "this stiff-necked people", as far back as in the Mosaic days, persisted in their error by rejecting the faith in Christ and by renouncing His doctrine which is the way to salvation. Although having the foreknowledge of the Messiah, foretold various time by God to His children, they did not welcome Him, rather, they rejected Him as a sinner. Because love, which is the life in God and the life of God in man, did not dwell in them, but only pride which is hardness of the heart and smoke (which) prevents from seeing the truth.
God, on the other hand, even though the sin of Israel was enormous, did not reject all of His people, having left there as He had already said to Elijah, a certain number of men who had not bowed their knees before any idol and who, more or less rapidly, would have come to the King of kings. To these remnants of the elect People - because the others had from children made themselves into step-chil dren of God by not recognizing the First-Born of all the true children of God, First-Born through Nature and Grace - Grace befell (them), the gift that God has predestined to all men, it is true, but that goes to and remains a gift to he who does not reject it or strips himself of it by sinning.
So Israel, for wanting to be too "great" according to its views, and for having seated itself with its mighty (ones) on the chair of Moses without, however, living according to the justice of Moses, by wanting to remain the "master" of the world and by making the Law impossible through the accumulation of petty human laws added and superimposed to the Law, for considering itself also the judge of the Saint of saints who had come from Heaven in order to bring Israel back to Justice, and the Law to its divine and perfect simplicity thus making it possible for every just man to put it into practice, be he a Jew or Samaritan, Greek or Roman, it did not attain the human glory that it [Israel] sought. Neither did it attain the supernatural glory which it proudly believed itself already to be the possessor of, but which instead, except for a few Hebrews who converted to Christ, merited the punishment from Heaven, the blindness, the confusion, the snare, the net, the stumbling block and the human punishment that made it bow to the ground under the blows of its oppressors and be dispersed and disliked throughout the world and throughout the centuries.
They rejected, denied and killed the King of kings, that King who would have given to them a kingdom without end. And they had kings and emperors, human rulers of every era as their chastisement and humiliation.
For their pride, this bread was offered to them: that of seeing themselves be substituted as the People of God by the Gentiles, and that of seeing the Temple, the altar and the city of which they were so proud, destroyed, as far as lacking in charitableness to whoever was not a citizen through birth or having been elected to high office.
They scorned and they saw themselves scorned. They dominated with an iron scepter and they were dominated with rods and chains by those whom they had scorned for so long. They became the outcasts, and others took their place. There was no longer Jerusalem and the Synagogue, but Rome and the Church. They "the first" became "the last", as the all-knowing and all-seeing Word had said.
And yet again, because God draws good from everything, even if it is substantially evil in itself, yet again, from the crime of the Jews, good has come (from it) for the Gentiles.
Not worse than the Jews towards the Christ but pagans, they respected the learned and peaceful man in Him, the man who did not scorn them and did not teach the crowds to scorn them, but rather, who was also good to the Gentiles. However, after the crime of Golgotha, their eyes opened to the truth and in the good, peaceful, learned man, capable of miracles, they recognized "the Son of God", and they turned to Him, living in His Church, and they had Life.
It is that the crime of the Jews, therefore, the crime of those who were avaricious of the lust for power, had become a wealth of spiritual treasures for the Gentiles who were without, and their [of the Jews] voluntary lack of consideration and understanding that stubbornly shut by rejecting the Light, by preferring the darkness to the Light, was the cause for the Light to go to the Gentiles and from this first cause, others would follow: love so that men whose nations were enemies with each other or who hated each other because they were rulers or were ruled, people of every place and of every tongue, reconciled with one another, calling each other "brothers" in the name of the most holy Brother who came to die in order to give them the one same Life, be they Jews or Gentiles, Hebrews of the Diaspora or Greeks, Romans, Libyans, Egyptians, Parthians or Syrians.
First it rose, or it rose again where it had died, the love which is life in God, and love made the first fruits holy, and holy the lump, and holy the whole mystical Vine. From the roots - which were of Israel through Mary the Mother of Jesus, virgin from the lineage of David, and through Jesus Her Only Begotten Son; and through the Apostles children of Israel, and the disciples drawn from the twelve tribes - to the new branches given by the Gentiles, grafted onto His trunk in place of the branches which, for not having wanted to remain united to Christ, trunk of the mystical Vine, were cut off because they were dead.
Holy is the whole mystical Body because holy is the Head and holy the root from whose purest shoot came the Head. Holy are the branches grafted onto it - even if, beforehand, they were not holy - provided they did not repeat the ancient sin which resulted in Adam losing Grace, and Israel, Grace and the blessings of God for almost the whole of its people.
The Life of the new branches and the life of every shoot of the Vine is love, the divine sap that nourishes whoever does not become detached from the trunk through pride. Because pride leads to doubt, upon the truths and duties which are made hateful to God when they are not accomplished. And from doubt comes the lukewarmness of faith, then disbelief, then the loss of the fear of God, and then the belief that God is so good thus not ever knowing how to be severe.
God is just in His goodness. Severe for as long as man persists in his sin, sweet when man is repentant (of it), always more prompt to re-admit him to His friendship than to condemn him, and is happy if of one who is spiritually dead, He can awaken or re-awaken him again. However, God is never foolish.
The Lord can work any miracle because infinite is His power and His mercy, and infinite are the merits of Christ the Redeemer. However, one thing is necessary in order to obtain any miracle: the good will of man, his faith in God, his hope in the Lord, his love towards God and neighbour, and love above all else, because she [love] is the soil which permits every virtue to flower and [to have] union with God.»