24th
Remembering Romero
Today marks the 29th anniversary of the assassination of Signor Oscar Romero.
The martyred archbishop of El Salvador stood as a prophet of hope against systems of oppression that ultimately took his life—shooting him through the heart while he performed mass at a small church in San Salvador.
Romero has been a mentoring figure for our own community, Word Made Flesh, as we pray for the courage to live into his legacy of love and sacrifice.
His story is fascinating. It involves a conversion to the poor from his cloistered and safe world of books and church diplomacy. His radicalized engagement of the social, cultural and political domain are inspiring. But rather than re-narrarate a life that has testaments dedicated to it, I’d like to share a few glimpses of his soul from his own prayers, homilies and speeches:
“Persecution is necessary in the church. Do you know why? Because the truth is always persecuted. Jesus Christ said, ‘If they persecute me, they will also persecute you.’ … the Church that lives up to its duty cannot exist without being persecuted.” May 29, 1977
“The church today does not rely on any power, on wealth. Today the church is poor. Today the church knows that the powerful reject her, but that she is loved by those who put their faith in God… This is the church that I want. A church that does not rely on the privileges and the worth of earthly things. A church ever more detached from earthly things, human things, so that she can judge them more freely from her perspective of the gospel, from her poverty.” August 28, 1977
“These unjust inequalities, these masses living in misery who cry out to heaven are a sign of our anti-Christianity. They are declaring before God that we believe more in the things of the earth than in the covenant of love that we have signed with him, and that because of our covenant with God, all human beings should consider themselves brothers and sisters… Human beings are more children of God when they become more brotherly or sisterly to other human beings, and less children of God when they feel less kinship with their neighbors.” September 18, 1977
“The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross… taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters.” November 20, 1977
“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us.” November 27, 1977
“Persecution must be so that those who bear that deep hope in their souls may put it to the test, so that perhaps the unbelieving may thus be converted and see that history’s horizon does not end with life but reaches far beyond, where the ideals of God’s true children extend.” September 23, 1979
