MEANING IN
HISTORY
does not mean that, because of being good Christians, we are unworthy of worldly honors, but rather that worldly honors are unworthy of us. According to the world we are infamous because, by the standards of the world, the cross which is our glory is the epitome of all sorts of infamy .•.. Our forefathers believed emperors were hardly worthy of being Christians. Things now have changed. We believe that Christian piety is hardly worthy of persons in high places: we are horrified by the baseness of the cross, we want to be applauded and respected.1t
If, however, the cross is the outstanding mark of an imitation of Christ, one cannot expect that the world will ever follow him. A World which calls itself Christian is a contradiction in terms, and a Christian understanding of history can be based only on the fundamental antagonism between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of man. And yet it is one of the great paradoxes in the history of Christianity that the most authentic imitation of Christ, that of St. Francis, merged into a revolutionary interpretation of the "Eternal Gospel" which led, by many detours and perversions, to a progressive interpretation of history which expected the eschaton not only in history but eventually also from it.
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