Archbishop speaks at Oscar Romero Commemorative Service

The Archbishop speaking at the Oscar Romero Commemorative Service

Ecumenical Service To Commemorate The 30^th Anniversary Of The Martyrdom Of Oscar Arnulfo Romero, Archbishop Of San Salvador

Bible Readings: Isaiah 40:1-11; Oscar Romero Meditation 125;

Luke 4:14-30

PRAYER: May I speak in the Name of the Son, in the Power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father. Amen

On Monday 24 March 1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was celebrating mass at the Divina Providencia Chapel, for the one-year anniversary of newspaper editor Jorge Pinto's mother.

He addressed the congregation, praying "That this immolated Body and this Blood sacrificed for humankind, may nourish our bodies and our blood in suffering and pain, like Christ, not for its own sake, but rather to give the concepts of justice and peace to our people. Let us join together then, intimately in faith and hope in this moment of prayer for Doña Sarita and for ourselves... "At this moment a shot rang out...

(March 24, 1980, [365]+ The Last Words, Through the Year with Oscar Romero, p.176)

2000 years before, in front of another congregation...

"Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to do the reading." (Luke 4:16)

Jesus begins making the rounds through the synagogues to teach. And if we put his ministry in a modern context we would say that he doesn't carry out his ministry in some big "celebrity" fashion.

He doesn't have a book launch, doesn't do an interview with celebrity guest interviewers, hasn't any Powerpoint, Video or DVD ministry. You don't see advertisements about him in the religious magazines or papers. He simply begins in the local church of his day, the synagogue.

However, this doesn't hinder him from proclaiming radical things. Even from the platform of ordinary religious ritual and conduct, Jesus proclaims a new freedom and forgiveness movement of God that shakes the people of the synagogue to the core and strikes a blow at the 'orthodoxy' of his day. He says:

"By the coming of the Lord's Spirit, I'm telling the good news to the poor. I'm announcing freedom for prisoners. I'm giving sight to the blind. I'm freeing everyone who suffers. I'm saying to you all, 'This is the year the Lord has chosen'."

These are all radical challenges which shake our brand of Christianity, move it from mere externalism to a faith which heals the hurts of the world by the power of the Holy Spirit from within.

Through Jesus, one of Nazareth's own local boys, the Holy Spirit is being powerfully poured forth to announce a whole new season of God's favour:

a whole new way of relating and belonging to God.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me", so declares Jesus. And you and I must be able to say this from the heart.

Because through Christ's death and resurrection, "Jesus has made us a kingdom (an active rule) of priests to serve his God and Father" (Revelation 1:6).

Kings and Priests. We as Christians, state Christ's rule over earthly rulers. And our office is priestly: representing God to the world and offering the world's worship to God, a 'priesthood' which belongs to the Church as a whole, not individuals.

This 'priesthood' is only possible by the power of the anointing Holy Spirit.

Archbishop Oscar Romero knew this and lived it and, through the power of the Holy Spirit, he represented God to the world and challenged the injustices which blasphemed and violated God. Oscar Romero also represented the world to the Church.

Archbishop Oscar Romero, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, had learnt that, from the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, the ordinary is the vehicle for the extraordinary. Jesus was in a seemingly ordinary synagogue.

Yet from this ordinary setting, Jesus proclaims extraordinary things in the power of the Holy Spirit.

San Salvador was an ordinary and a very hurting place. Archbishop Oscar Romero used his experience of the poverty and suffering of ordinary people to proclaim the extraordinary Gospel for all. Like Prophet Isaiah who was told to 'shout, to cry' about the transience and fragility of human beings in contrast to God's eternal glory. A glory into which all human beings are invited to participate, by the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

From the beginning to the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, his one great concern was to manifest and demonstrate the heart of God's love for sinful humanity. In his life he clearly demonstrated God's love-affair with humanity. Yes, so that God's life may be allowed to invade the life of mere mortals.

And, in the words of Isaiah 40, he may "give power to the faint, and strengthen the powerless. Renewing the strength of all those who wait upon him. Yes, they shall then mount up with wings like eagles, they shall then run and not be weary, they shall then walk and not faint." (vv.29-31)

Archbishop Oscar Romero, as a Prophet and a Shepherd, willingly spoke out and protected and fed his people. He reminds me of St Cuthbert, a bishop and missionary in AD 687, whom the Church celebrates today. Cuthbert was an orphan and lived with a poor widow who loved him as though he had been her own son. He started his life as a shepherd, received God's call, and cared for his people and spread the gospel to Lindisfarne and all over this region. Cuthbert was a good shepherd!

A good shepherd is one who protects the vulnerable in society from injustice and oppression and ensures they live in peace and security – as well as feeding them with the bread of life – Jesus Christ. Cuthbert, like all Celts, linked sacrament with service, altar with hearth, worship with work. As did Archbishop Oscar Romero.

As a teenager, I was struck by the motto above my mother's kitchen sink: "Divine service offered here three times a day."

Thirteen children, a husband and many members of the extended family – it had to be. My mother was always expecting the unexpected in the ordinary things of life. And in all circumstances she always gave thanks.

Her challenge to me is best summed up in the words of Anselm of Canterbury. "I was created to see God, and I have not yet accomplished that for which I was made".

We must not let our expectations blind us to God's possibilities for our life: to see God, "Worship him and enjoy him for ever".

As a follower of Jesus Christ, Archbishop Oscar Romero brought the promise of hope and freedom to his hearers. He showed them that there was a better way of living, and a better way of loving Christ. But, like Jesus, many were threatened and made angry and confused and wanted to kill him, wanted to cut off the voice which exposed their greed and oppression.
But the martyrdom of Oscar Romero only served to proclaim the message even louder. He was God's megaphone, arousing the deafened in San Salvador, both in his life and in his death.

And as we remember Oscar Romero, we celebrate the whole communion of saints and their part in the total life and witness of God's holy people. He may not yet have been canonised, but Archbishop Romero is honoured and remembered across the world as an obedient servant and follower of Christ, who saw Christ in the needy, the victim, the cast aside.

Archbishop Romero was recognized as one of the ten twentieth-century martyrs and his statue stands above the West door of Westminster Abbey.

I wear a cross made for me by an El Salvadorean orphan survivor, and at the back it has Archbishop Oscar Romero's words: "Peace will flower when love and justice pervade our environment."

In T S Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury murdered by Henry II in 1170, says, "This is the sign of the Church always. The sign of Blood. Blood for Blood. His Blood given to buy my life. My blood given to pay for his death".

For me, Archbishop Oscar Romero is not only a Martyr, but a saint as well. And my heart gladly rejoiced when, on March 4^th, 2010, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador passed, with 56 votes, Resolution #294 which declares, "...that the 24^th of March every year shall be known as the 'National Day of Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero Galdámez' because of his pastoral work and the message of hope in daily life that he brought to the Salvadorean people."

A Martyr and a saint? But who is a saint?" A young boy was once asked this question, and - remembering figures in the stained glass windows in his church - he said, "A saint is someone through whom light passes." Without exception saints are gloriously transparent. We can see through them and what they transmit is the light that shines through them from beyond themselves. They have no light of their own: they are transfigured by the presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

Saints and martyrs are risk-takers for God. Their eyes are fixed on God and his Kingdom; and not on their plights, sufferings, and tribulations. Summoned by the vision of God, they act like Yorkshire terriers - never letting go - and only doing so in order to get a firmer grip.

Who are saints? In the Beatitudes Jesus describes them as "Poor in spirit". That is, with no illusions about themselves and their lack of goodness. They are humble; hungry and thirsting after righteousness. They live in mercy, in meekness, in purity of heart, and in the making of peace. They are blessed, beatified, sanctified and glorified.

They recognise their deepest need and have indeed discovered where that need can be supplied - supplied by the source of it all - God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They are blessed because they have discovered their own poverty, they are sorrowfully aware of their own sin, they are blessed, beatified, because they hunger and thirst for a righteousness which they know isn't intrinsically in them. Saints are people who have let God live fully in their lives. This is their habitat, their environment

For example, St Bede tells us that, "St Cuthbert urged his people to lift up their hearts and give thanks to God more by the yearnings of his own heart than by the sound of his voice. Often, as they were pouring out their sins, he would be the first to burst into tears; tears of sympathy with their weakness."

Yes, there is peace which comes in living in mercy, in meekness, in purity of heart, and in the making of peace. .

These were the qualities of Jesus Christ himself, and they who follow in the steps of Jesus Christ know the joy of the Christian life.

It is joyful because the very nature of Christian faith is its readiness for adventure.

Most of us live a cautious life on the principle of safety first; but to live the Christian life there is necessarily a certain recklessness, a willingness to adventure – a venturesome faith.

If faith can see every step of the way, it isn't really faith. It is sometimes necessary for the Christian to take the way to which the voice of God is calling them, without knowing what the consequences will be.

Jesus also says a saint is anyone who has discovered the bliss of suffering for him. Long ago Plato said that the good person will always "choose rather to suffer wrong, than to do wrong".

Herein is the bliss of loyalty. And there is the deepest of all satisfaction in loyalty, even when loyalty costs all that a person has to give. In the words of Revelation 7, the saints are robed in white because they were loyal to the sufferings of Christ and have come out of the great tribulation. They have been faithful witnesses - martyrs. Martyrs don't just wake up to be one.

But daily live a life of martyrdom: faithfully bearing witness to God. Faithful witness: that is the meaning of the word martyr. 'You will be my witnesses, my martyrs, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,' so said Jesus.

Like the 12 year-old Uganda martyr called Kizito - burnt alive for his faithfulness to Christ, and died singing of God's victory and his power to raise the dead.

So a saint is any person in Christ whose hope is flaming bright and whose effort is intensely strenuous, even in the grey days when there is nothing to do but wait.

If we permit God he will give us the vision, even in harsh desert places, he will send us the vision, and with it the toil and trouble of the way become all worthwhile.

A saint, therefore, is a person whose vision is focussed on God in this world and in the next.

Who is a saint? It's a person who has discovered that power lies through total abandonment to God. Saints have completely re-evaluated what constitutes wealth; and have discovered that the way to independence lies through dependence and trust in God and his body the Church.

Each one of us, the most unsaintly as well as the most God-focussed disciple, has a next step which will take us nearer to God.

And what God asks of us is that we take that step. "The meek" said Jesus "inherit the earth." They don't buy it; they don't conquer it; they inherit it: it is a gift. The good news is that even though the saints are in communion, they are never cloned. They are all different and as unique as fingerprints. There are no duplicates.

What grace needs and asks of us is willingness and obedience like that of Mary the mother of our Lord: "Be it unto me according to thy word."

As Martin Luther said, "God creates out of nothing, and until we become nothing, God can create nothing out of us."

As Archbishop Oscar Romero said, "Each one of you has to be a messenger, a prophet... even if there is only one person baptized in the whole world, this person has the responsibility to the world to make sure the flag of the Lord's truth and his divine justice continues to fly." (Meditation 125: God's Microphones)

Therefore, whenever the needs of God's children are to be supplied, wherever there are captives needing deliverance, the poor asking for tidings of their heavenly Father, the broken-hearted longing to be healed, the blind praying for or needing recovery of sight, a Christian, anointed by the Holy Spirit, is needed.

We are invited to be God's witnesses.

So, as we thank God today for Archbishop Oscar Romero's life and martyrdom, let us begin to announce the saving movement of change offered in Jesus Christ within our own 'synagogues': the local church, our own family, our friends and associates. These are the avenues for manifesting the greatness of Jesus' Good News to the poor.

Let us do great things by simply loving the poor, the prisoner, the stranger, and the afflicted of our imprisoned world. And loving ourselves as part of them.

Then an outpouring of the Holy Spirit will sweep across this country that will set it free from the shackles of materialism and greed.

"By the coming of the Lord's Spirit [on us]:

Let us tell the good news to the poor.

Let us announce freedom for prisoners.

Let us give sight to the blind.

Let us free everyone who suffers.

And let us say, '2010 is the year the Lord has chosen.'"

Let us do it. And let us do it now.

And I hope it will not take another 30 years before Archbishop Romero is canonized!

* Photograph courtesy of Carmelite Projects & Publications office and reproduced with kind permission.  All rights reserved.