Pax Romana

Greet all of your leaders and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you.  Hebrews 13:24  NASB

Italy – From 27 BCE to 180 CE, the Roman Empire experienced relative internal peace.  There were still wars with hostile regions, but tradition suggests that the period was less militarily aggressive than either the centuries before or after.  Nevertheless, the Roman Empire was generally a place of violence and ruthlessness.  Greetings from the leaders and saints in “Italy” did not come without significant overtones.  So much for the history.

The fact that Italy as a nation state did not exist when this letter was written makes the verse even more unusual.  Italy is a very young nation.  Garibaldi succeeded in drawing together the various duchies and kingdoms only in 1861, so Italy isn’t even as old as America.  The text in Hebrews does not refer to Italy as we know it today, but only to an area perhaps geographically similar to modern Italy.  It was, in a word, all Rome.

Geopolitical circumstances have changed.  Culture hasn’t.  Italy today might have lines drawn around it on a map but it is still a place where each region remembers its one-time independence, where every city has traditions that go back to Roman times and where language betrays ancient differences, not common consciousness.

And as the verse says, we who are now here, living in the remains of Pax Romana, greet you.  On this day when pagan society celebrates left-over rituals from diabolic times, we, the saints in “Italy,” send you grace and peace.  We won’t be parading in the “Trick or Treat” streets of Parma (I’m not sure anyone will), but we will be thinking of how far we have come from those days when mirth meant mayhem, when demons and death were everyday experiences, and when the West was shaped by dark forces.  We will remember that the children of light lived in ancient Rome, and perhaps ancient Parma, bringing a new way of life with an very ancient God to people who desperately needed escape from Pax Romana.  Perhaps this is still our task.

So, greetings!  Here are some looks of our surroundings today.