Where Are We And Where Are We Going?
Homily for Tenth Sunday – 9 June 2024
Some of you may know the legend of Quo Vadis, Latin for, “Where are you going?” The Quo Vadis tradition is the story of St Peter’s escape from Emperor Nero’s persecution of Christians in Rome in the first century. As legend goes, Peter decided to flee Rome at the outbreak of the persecution. On the Via Appia, one of the main roads out of Rome, Peter met Jesus, who was heading into the city of Rome to face the persecution. Peter asked him, “Quo vadis, Domine - “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “I am going to Rome to be crucified,”– and disappeared. It was more a case of Jesus asking Peter, “Where are you going?” Straight away, Peter returned to the city to embrace martyrdom. In Rome, you can visit the place on the Via Appia Antica where this meeting is said to have occurred. There is a beautiful little church on the spot, called Domine Quo Vadis.
Domine, quo vadis. Annibale Carracci
In our reading from the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible, the Lord God called out to Adam asking, “Where are you?” Of course, it is not as if God didn’t know where Adam was; God is all-knowing. ‘Where are you?’ is rather a question of ‘where are you going?’, ‘what have you done?’, ‘what are you about?’ The question Peter asked Jesus, “Where are you going?” or as we have it in the first reading today, “Where are you?” is asked of each of us today. Where are we really? Who are we and what are our lives about? Beyond the distractions of life and the masks we wear, where are we?
The consequences of Adam and Eve’s first sin placed them somewhere else, on a different course, in a direction away from God. The story of the Fall, as it is referred to, continues to be an accurate description of human temptation and sin. Like in the case of Adam and Eve, sin results in fear and shame. Both Adam and Eve realise their vulnerability, their nakedness, and they try to hide. Adam blames his wife, Eve, and even blames God for giving him Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.
The disobedience of our first parents in eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which was the sin of taking to themselves the right to decide what is right and wrong, rather than obey God, changed the course of human history, and continues to play out in all human lives. Our tendency is to justify our choices with phrases like, “I decide what is right for me.” It is about appropriating to ourselves a moral autonomy that only belongs to God. At the heart of our rebellion, which seeks to make us the master of our own lives, is a forgetting of who we are and what we are, and what our purpose is.
As with Adam and Eve, our human condition is marked by a sense of shame and vulnerability, and a tendency to blame others, our circumstances, and perhaps even God. We easily end up being divided against ourselves. Even the great St Paul in his Letter to the Romans laments that the good he wants to do, he does not end up doing, and the evil he wants to avoid doing, he ends up doing. We all know this sense of being pulled in different directions.
The good news of the Gospel is that God does not give up on us. In the same way that he sewed clothes for Adam and Eve, to cover their shame, God reaches out to us with the garment of salvation. The last verse of the first reading has been called the Protoevangelium, the first Gospel, by scholars down the centuries. It is the first promise in the Bible of God’s salvation. In this verse, the Lord God says that the offspring of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Perhaps you know that is why so many of our statues of Our Lady show her with the head of a serpent under her heel.
At the Easter Vigil, during the Service of Light, there is a beautiful line in the great Exultet song, which goes, “O happy fault that gained for us so great a Redeemer.” You see, God’s response to our betrayal of trusting friendship with him, is to give us Jesus as our Saviour.
The Gospel for today’s Mass shows us this Saviour in full display. He is the One who casts out devils, the One who crushes the head of the serpent that tempts us and set us in a wrong direction. Jesus is the One who has power over sin and the Evil one.
We see that the struggle between good and evil in the Genesis reading continues to play out in the Gospel reading, and in our lives today. Jesus gives us the grace to move from estrangement from God, from trying to hide because of fear and shame, to becoming children of God. When we allow Jesus into our lives and give our hearts to him, we say with him to the Father, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When we do the will of God, we are the brothers and sisters of Jesus. With God’s help, with his grace and forgiveness, we can more consistently choose the good.
The use of Google Maps or other GPS navigators always starts with where we are. To work out a route to where we are going, we have to know, and in this case, the GPS needs to know, where we are starting from. It is the same in our lives and in the spiritual life. We need an awareness of what our current position and state is. It is like needing to know the symptoms before engaging in a diagnosis and healing therapy.
This is the value of facing questions like, “Where are you?” and, “Where are you going?” Our honest facing up to who we are and our needs, and our frailty, can open up in us the space for God’s healing grace. Each of us is looking for meaning and purpose. We want to know where we fit in and what our role is. We want to know what the future holds for us and how we do this thing called life. ‘Where we are” is about looking for the truth about God, about others, and about ourselves. This truth will allow us to invite God’s help, his healing and salvation.
What is true for us individually and in our families, is true for our parish. “Where are you?”, or “Where are you going?” are appropriate questions for us as a Christian community, as a parish family. Being the brothers and sisters of Jesus, being the family of God, means that there is a profound connection between us. God wants us to be brothers and sisters to each other. He wants to us to be church family. He wants us to know each other, care for each other and pray for each other.
All this ties into a vision for who we want to be as a parish. Vision for the parish is so important because, as the Book of Proverbs says, “where there is no vision, the people perish.” A vision is a God-inspired picture of the future which inspires passion and gives direction. I believe that God is doing something beautiful in this parish and that he wants to do so much more.
We need to open ourselves to God’s vision for us individually, and in our families, starting from an honest acknowledgement of “where we are.” Also, trusting in the Holy Spirit we can be inspired to paint a picture of the future of our parish which will drive us forward, which will shape us into a people who are intent on the will of God, a people becoming more and more the disciples of Jesus.
What God-inspired vision do you have for yourself? How can you let God do great things for you, as Our Lady sings about in her hymn of praise? And what are the emerging and growing elements of a God-inspired vision for our parish? Think in terms of our parish being a centre of spirituality and faith formation. This will be reflected in the quality of our worship and liturgy, in our singing and ministries, and in our spiritual and faith formation programmes. Think in terms of us being family to each other; that our parish will be a centre of community, of meaningful connections, of invitation, welcome and hospitality. Think of our parish being a centre for youth, young adults and young families. Think of our parish becoming a centre of evangelization. This will mean engaging in the core mission of the Church, which is to make disciples.
So where are we and where are we going? Can we step out of the places of hiding, of fear and low self-esteem, out of the individualism and partitioning of our lives, to allow God’s saving work into our lives and to allow God to use us in his saving work in each other’s lives. We are called to be the brothers and sisters of Jesus, the family of God.