hen
he visited Colombia (1976) Pope Paul VI received a group of Indios.
They spoke of their sufferings and of their struggle to regain their
cultural origins. At the end, they
told the Pope: “The colonizers gave us a Bible, destroyed our cultures and
took our land. Today we give back
the Bible, and ask back our land and the right to live our original cultures.”
This
stand may seem aggressive, but we cannot forget that, in the name of the Bible,
Christians have waged wars and undertaken crusades against “infidels,”
burned “heretics” at the stake and did not always give witness to a God of
peace and love. This unjust model
of society, which reduces Europe and North America to islands of well-being and
consumerism, often at the expenses of misery of much of the rest of humanity,
is, in some ways, the inheritance of a civilization which calls itself Christian
and which, through centuries, has held sway in the West.
The Bible contains the revelation, “I am the Lord…” (Ex. 20; Dt. 5). Thence flow words about the Lord’s will and proposal for a Covenant, which speaks of the people as a Community in the diversity of cultures. By that Word God reveals His presence and makes of us witnesses that the Word became flesh, taking on the whole of humanity in His love. For us, Christians, this Word is somebody, and His name is Jesus Christ.
(From Xaverian Mission Newsletter)