Quo Vadis
In 1896 Polish author Henry Sienkewicz wrote a book that contains this story: It is the 300's and Emperor Nero is carrying out a persecution of Christians in Rome. St. Peter is fleeing from Rome. On the road he meets Jesus coming from the opposite direction. He asks Jesus, "Quo vadis?" i.e., "Where are you going?" Jesus answers, ""To Rome, to be crucified again."
Today, we can tell the same story with a crucial difference. "Jesus can say, "I am going to America to be crucified again."
in fact he has already arrived.
- Here in America Jesus is being crucified again
- -by every American who chooses to act with aggressive ignorance rather than with peaceful understanding and genuine patriotism. .
- -by political leaders who pledge to preserve and protect the Constitiution and then openly betray their pledge. .
-- by a broken educational system that almost guarantees failure for too many children. In Christ, we cannot tolerate a system in which a School superintendant said, "Our goal this year is to try to see to it that our graduates can read their diplomas."
-- by continuing racism that is literally lethal to Black Americans.
-- by a financial system that permits corporations to pay little or no taxes that could help alleviate poverty and hunger for the poor.
_--by a still overly clericalized Church that is losing members every day who should be applying their vocations to help make our society more human by making it more luminously alive in the way Jesus actively taught and empowered us to be.
I -- In sum, Jesus is being crucified here in America, by everyone of us who are not using our God-giving gifts to do all that we can to fulfill Jesus' great prayer, "Thy Kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven."
Now we should ask ourselves, "Quo vadimus?" Where are we going?
I humbly advise all of my readers from the other 106 countries where I thankfully have readers, to make your own list for your own country. .
Comments: Massimini7@gmail.com
