Jewish tradition has a beautiful understanding of sanctity. Its holy ones are known as tzaddikim. A tzaddik is one who faithfully lives the commandments (mitzvot) and acts with compassion and humility. Their life integrates the will of God, the Law, and the world around them. In mystical Judaism, particularly Hasidism, the righteousness of the tzaddik sustains not only their community but the entire world. Their holiness radiates beyond Israel to the nations - to all of creation itself. They accomplish this by uniting their lives to the Torah (the first five books of Scripture), which is understood as the Word of God at the heart of creation.
Throughout the Old Testament, each great tzaddik is entrusted with sustaining the world in a particular moment of history. Yet no single tzaddik is wholly perfect. Jacob, for example, resorts to deception in order to advance God’s providential plan - securing the blessing that Isaac was prepared to give to Esau despite Esau’s disregard for the covenant and Rebekah’s prophetic insight. Jacob later struggles to hold together a divided family: two wives and their children, each representing a different spiritual path through their names - Leah embodying fruitfulness and fidelity through joy, and Rachel embodying love marked by longing and suffering. In each wife, there are echoes of the other: Leah experiences sorrow as Rachel experiences joy. Despite Jacob’s efforts, the union remains fractured.
Joseph, Jacob’s son, becomes the next great tzaddik. Through profound personal suffering in Egypt, he continues the healing work begun by his father. Joseph succeeds where others failed: through forgiveness, he brings spiritual reconciliation to his family, and through wisdom, he preserves them materially during famine. Through Joseph, Israel survives. Yet the healing is not complete. The descendants of Israel must still atone for their sins; joy and suffering must become one. Joseph’s protection does not endure forever, and the Israelites are eventually enslaved in Egypt - mirroring Joseph’s own suffering and serving both as just consequence for their betrayal of him and as a means of unifying the people through shared suffering. When the time is fulfilled, God raises up Moses to lead them out of bondage, but Moses’ own sin prevents him from entering the Promised Land.
These stories reveal a pattern: each righteous one strives toward holiness yet falls short. Each wrestles with personal and collective sin in the work of restoring creation to God’s perfect will. Yet their labor endures. They do not give up. From generation to generation, each successive tzaddik brings healing to the people. God is generous in His gifts, honoring their struggle for holiness in a fallen world. Most importantly, the true lesson is not simply what each tzaddik did, but how they did it: by uniting their lives to the Word of God and becoming living echoes of that Word.
The Jewish people continue to await the final tzaddik: one so perfectly united to the will of God that he becomes the living Torah - the Word enfleshed. This one they call Moshiach, the Messiah.
“And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” — John 1:14
One of the great tragedies of human history is that when the Messiah took flesh and walked among us, so many failed to recognize Him. Many still do. And in truth, despite opportunities to encounter Christ all around us, we miss Him too - catching glimpses here and there. The question for all of us is: how can we see more clearly?
Unlike every tzaddik before Him, Jesus is not just a holy man. He is the Word of God at the heart of creation. He did not need to unite Himself to the Word. He is the Word. While man alone cannot bring Salvation, Jesus can. Instead of Israel striving to ascend to God, God united Himself to Israel in a descent of love so he could stand in their place. He fulfilled the prophets: He entered and left Egypt as a child, crossed the Jordan, chose twelve apostles corresponding to the twelve sons of Jacob, and reversed the sin of Adam and Eve by sweating blood in a garden and hanging upon a tree - the new Tree of Life. He surrendered His spirit after praying the Psalms. Humanity could not become the Word, so God entered creation as the living Word and became one with His people. From Jerusalem, His saving work went out to the whole world. In a few short centuries he conquered Rome - the enemy of Israel - and made it his Church. Through the Catholic Church, His name is proclaimed among the nations. He is the Messiah.
What does this mean for us as Christians? As members of the New Covenant, we are called to love Jesus so deeply that we seek to unite our entire lives to Him first and foremost by allowing him to work in us. We no longer work out our holiness through the Mosaic Law; we work it out through union with our Beloved. Through dying to ourselves in love and becoming one with Christ, we discover joy within suffering. This is why Jesus speaks of Heaven as a wedding feast and calls the Church His Bride. In love, we become one flesh with Christ, so that when others look upon us, they no longer see us - but Him. This is the difference between a tzaddik and a saint.
But how do we do this?
St. Jerome famously said, “Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.” We unite ourselves to Jesus by immersing ourselves in the Word of God, asking the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds and hearts. We read Scripture as a lover studies the face, heart, movements, and thoughts of the beloved. We lay down our own will in humility and love. We consummate this union sacramentally by receiving Christ in the Holy Eucharist as often as possible. And when we fall into selfishness and sin, we return to Him through reconciliation. Unlike Jacob who saw a ladder of ascent to God and wrestled with an Angel, we allow God to descend into us and carry us up the ladder.
In this way, something even greater than the work of the ancient tzaddikim unfolds - greater even than the Temple of Solomon. In the ancient temple, only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, yet every time you receive Holy Communion, you become a living Holy of Holies. This is a mystery that Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and the prophets would have longed to experience. These men who are greater than you or I missed out on a profound gift that so many of us take for granted. The gap between human imperfection and the perfect Word of God is healed by the Word’s desire to become one with us. By receiving God’s love and surrendering to His holy will at work within us, we are united to the Word at the heart of creation as part of His very body - and through us as members of His body, a new creation flows into the world.
As we approach the New Year and consider our resolutions, let us recommit ourselves to the essentials: studying our Beloved in Scripture, receiving Him in the Holy Eucharist, and seeking His mercy through frequent confession. Above all, let us do so with love, intentionality, and awe at the God who makes all things new - including time at the turning of each new year, including you, and including me.
May God bless each of us with renewed faith in 2026 and a renewed world in Christ,
Matt and the Catholic.Store team
