Quo Vadis?
It was just last Sunday, that we were praising the faith shown by Simon Peter, the rock on whom Jesus built his Church. Peter had proclaimed a great truth, that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matthew 16:16). Today we pick up, right after this exchange, with Jesus describing how he is to be handed over to the leaders of the community, to suffer, and to die. Peter pulls his Master aside and starts to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you” (22). To this, Jesus replies – something I am certain none of us would ever want to hear from our God – “Get behind me, Satan!” (23). This is a seriously harsh statement. Jesus rebukes Peter, whom he had just praised for his faith, and calls him a devil! This is no Mama from The Waterboy talking here as a joke, this is the Lord. Why did Jesus react so strongly to Peter’s refusal to believe the Messiah had to die?
The problem was as Jesus put it, that Peter was “thinking not as God does, but as human beings do” (ibid). Peter was not accepting, as many of us do not in our own lives, the very central reality of our Christian faith, the reality of the Cross. We are Christians, and we adore the cross, it is the symbol of our faith. In our Catholic faith we have a crucifix present at every mass, to remind us of who we are. Maybe you have never let this fact wash over you. If God calls us to give our life for the faith, we are to obey. In our contemporary world, we often forget this charge of our Christianity. Still even if as you read this you feel like Jeremiah that the Lord “duped” you, and that you let yourself be duped (Jeremiah 20:7), it is true all the same that center of the Christian life is to give up one’s life for the good of the world in God’s will.
In the beautiful novel Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a tradition about Peter is dramatized that has long been held by Christians, and that shows Peter coming to full terms with what it really means to be a Christian. The book paints a picture of Nero’s Rome, a city of debauchery, selfishness, licentiousness, and excess, where the top value was one’s individual pleasure. It was a world where “I get mine, and could not care less if you get yours.” Sadly, my friends, this bears a striking resemblance to the world in which we live today in the West. A world like this cannot (and in the case of Rome, did not) sustain itself. It is a dying world. The solution was given to the world by Christ, self-donation and self-sacrifice. The answer to the problem of human suffering is the acceptance of suffering for the good of others. Jesus gave his life “as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). In Quo Vadis, the Apostle Peter is in Rome during the great persecution of Christians that broke out after Rome suffered a horrific fire that consumed most of the city and killed hosts of people. This fire was very possibly started by the insane Emperor Nero himself (which is the narrative given by the author), but to save his skin it is thought the Christians were blamed as the arsonists. As more and more of Christ’s followers were rounded up to be fed to lions and other wild beasts, Peter was urged by his flock to leave Rome. After all, he was our leader, and he needed to live to keep guiding God’s flock. On his way out of the city, Peter has a vision of the Jesus. The Christ asks him “quo vadis, domine?” – “where are you going, lord?” In this question, Jesus sums up why he reacted to Peter in today’s Gospel the way he did. He pointedly calls Peter “lord,” to show that we are always so tempted to put our will before God’s will, even though God truly is the only Lord. And the questions “where are you going?” cuts so poignantly as well. Where else should Peter be going? Sienkiewicz presents these words from Jesus: “When you abandon my people, I must go to Rome to be crucified once more” (chapter 83). This is to say, someone had to do it. Someone had to put their life on the line to witness to God’s power. In the face of such a world, the witness of Peter, and later of Paul, served to galvanize the selfless love of the Christian community in that center of civilization. A better way, a way of self-gift fought and overturned the rule of self-love.
This question then is being asked of us today. Do we identify ourselves with the cross? Where are we going? Our world is in such a need of selfless love and belief in the truth of a God that gives all, that it is literally destroying itself to find what it needs. However, why is it not finding Christ? God is not to blame in this. It is us, the Christian community that holds this burden. We turn away from the Cross and expect our faith to be lived without pain, fear of rejection, persecution, and suffering. This cannot be so. As Jesus told Peter and the disciples: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it” (Matthew 16:24-25). We must be willing every day (even if it is not in a bloody martyrdom) “to offer [our] bodies as a living sacrifice” (Romans 12:1). The comforts and praises of this world are not part of our identity, and we cannot “conform [our]selves to this age” (2), but rather witness against anything that is wrong in it and show a better way, even – and especially – when it costs us dearly.
Peter finally came to terms with the cost of discipleship and the building of the kingdom of God. He found the truth, like Jeremiah, that the need to speak the truth of the kingdom “becomes like a fire in [one's] heart” (Jer. 20:9). Our soul “thirsts” for the Lord our God (Ps. 63:2), and we can no longer hold in our love for him. Our destiny does not end in the suffering our witness demands, it ends even as Jesus promised his disciples with life after death. He was raised on the third day, so that “whoever loses his life for [his] sake will find it” (Matt. 16:25). Our destiny is in heaven with the Lord. May the martyrs’ witness remind us of the true meaning of Christianity. God give you the strength to answer well his question when the presented with the great choice in your life. Will you turn away to follow your own will and fail to witness to the kingdom, or will you turn to accept the Cross that saves. Quo vadis?
