Where Are You Going?

When my cousin Paul was just 3 years old or so, he and his mother were making their way to their parish church, Our Lady of Grace in Babylon. I was with them. I was 9 or so. For the entire car ride, he was asking for gum. Actually, he was demanding gum. “Gum! Gum! I want gum!”

Eventually, we arrived at the church. But even while walking in, “Gum! Gum! I want gum!” And just as we were approaching the steps to one of the side entrances (I don’t know why I remember this like it was yesterday) my aunt stopped and said, “Paulie! Gum is at home!”

Paulie turned around and started walking away from us. “Where are you going!?” my aunt called out after him. And as you might imagine, Paulie replied, “Home!” We all laughed.

According to tradition, when Saint Peter was walking away from Rome to escape Nero’s persecution of the Christians, Jesus appeared to him, walking in the opposite direction. Peter asked, "Domine, quo vadis?" meaning "Lord, where are you going?" Jesus replied that he was going to Rome to be crucified again. Peter then returned to Rome to face his own martyrdom.

Quo vadis? Where are you going? Where are you going, Paulie? And where are you going, Peter? And where are any of us going when we turn away from God? It is absurd to imagine my 3-year-old cousin actually making his own way home for gum. He would never have made it. Nor would Peter find happiness in turning away from his call to martyrdom.

The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, February 11th, is superseded by this Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, but we should still speak a word about the Blessed Mother here, because when Mary appeared to Saint Bernadette in Lourdes, France, in 1858, Bernadette was actually disobeying her mother. She was removing her shoes in order to cross a shallow stream, though she was forbidden because of her failing health. That’s when Our Lady appeared to Bernadette. It was almost a kind of, “Dear Bernadette, where are you going?”

It reminds me of when Our Lady appeared to the children in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917. They were supposed to be praying the Rosary in the fields, and they were, but they were cheating. Instead of saying the prayers in their entirety, they were racing through the beads saying only, “Our Father, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary...” When Our Lady appeared, it was, again, almost like my aunt asking my cousin, “Why the rush? Where are you going?”

An even better example may be when Saint Juan Diego was trying to avoid Our Lady after she had appeared to him in Mexico City in 1531. He was afraid of what she might ask of him. And so on one occasion, he decided to go around the hill called Tepeyac, where she had been appearing, but she cut him off and asked, “What is this road you’re taking? Where are you going?”

With the Season of Lent fast approaching, let’s ask ourselves honestly, “Where are we going?” And if we are walking away from God, or have made wrong turns, isn’t going back to Him the surest way forward? Could any of us get any nearer to the happiness we desire without God? +