Seven Sermons of Archbishop Oscar Romero for Lent

These "sermons" are redactions of quotations from Romero's sermons, arranged as though they were commentaries on the "Works of Justice and Peace", which is the mission statement of the Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House.

The First Work of Justice and Peace: + Live simply and justly in solidarity with the poor and marginalized and be a good neighbor. Make no war on them, rather, be one with them in spirit, truth, and love.

The poor have shown the church the true way to go. A church that does not join the poor, in order to speak out from the side of the poor against the injustices committed against them, is not the true church of Jesus Christ.

The church's social teaching tells everyone that the Christian religion does not have a merely horizontal meaning, or a merely spiritualized meaning that overlooks the wretchedness that surrounds it. It is a looking at god, and from God at one's neighbor as a brother or sister, and an awareness that "whatever you did to one of these, you did to me."

We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas ribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed tonight with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways.

We wish to shake our baptized people out of habits that threaten to make them practically baptized pagans, idolaters of their money and power. What sort of baptized persons are these? Those who want to bear the mark of the Spirit and the fire that Christ baptizes with must take the risk of renouncing everything and seeking only God's reign and his justice.

Salvadorans marked by Christ's baptism, which is Spirit and fire, must be Salvadorans of eternal hope, they cannot yield to pessimism. Neither must they let an earthly political program exhaust their ideals of eternal glory and triumph. The great hope of baptized Salvadorans must stand above all the desperate plans of the earth's political leaders.

What an honor to think that all of you before me are Christ! Even the humblest peasant, who may be pondering there next to a radio, you are Christ! For your baptism is one with the death and resurrection of the Lord.

When we say "for the poor," we do not take sides with one social class, please note. What we do, according to Puebla, is invite all social classes, rich and poor without distinction, saying to everyone: Let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own -- indeed, as what it really is, the cause of Jesus Christ, who on the final judgment day will call to salvation those who treated the poor with faith in him. "Whatever you did to one of these poor ones -- the neglected, blind, lame, deaf, mute -- you did to me."

The human progress that Christ wants to promote is that of whole persons-- in their transcendent dimension, and their historical dimension, in their spiritual dimension and their bodily dimension. Whole persons must be saved, persons in their social relationships, who won't consider some people more human than others, but will view all as brothers and sisters and give preference to the weakest and neediest. This is the integral human salvation that the church wants to bring about -- a hard mission! Often the church will be cataloged with communistic or revolutionary subversives. But the church knows what its revolution is: the revolution of Christ's love.

Mary and the church in Latin America are marked by poverty. Vatican Council II says that Mary stands out among the poor who await redemption from God. Mary appears in the Bible as the expression of poverty, of humility, of one who needs everything from God.

When she comes to America, her intimate, motherly converse is with an Indian, an outcast, a poor man. Mary's dialog in America begins with a sign of poverty, poverty that is hunger for God, poverty that is joy of independence. Poverty is freedom. Poverty is needing others, needing brothers and sisters, supporting one another so as to help one another. This is what Mary means and what the church means in Latin America.

If at some time the church betrayed its spirit of poverty, then it was unfaithful to the gospel, which meant it to be distinct from the powers of the earth, not depending on the money that makes humans happy, but depending on the power of Christ, on God's power. That is its greatness.

When we speak of the church of the poor, we are not using Marxist dialectic, as though there were another church of the rich. What we are saying is that Christ, inspired by the Spirit of God, declared, "The Lord has sent me to preach good news to the poor" -- words of the Bible -- so that to hear him one must become poor.

I am glad, brothers and sisters, that our church is persecuted precisely for its preferential option for the poor and for trying to become incarnate in the interest of the poor and for saying to all the people, to rulers, to the rich and powerful: unless you become poor, unless you have a concern for the poverty of our people as though they were your own family, you will not be able to save society.

The church's good name is not a matter of being on good terms with the powerful. The church's good name is a matter of knowing that the poor regard the church as their own, of knowing that the church's life on earth is to call on all, on the rich as well, to be converted and to be saved alongside the poor, for they are the only ones called blessed.

The Second Work of Justice and Peace: + Hear the truth when it is spoken to you. Discern the signs of the times and speak truth ---- to power, to the people, and to the Church.

Those who do not understand transcendence cannot understand us. When we speak of injustice here below and denounce it, they think we are playing politics. It is in the name of God's just reign that we denounce the injustices of the earth.

Not just purgatory but hell awaits those who could have done good & did not do it.It is the reverse of the Beati-tude that the Bible has for those who are saved, for the saints,"who could have done wrong & did not." Of those who are condemned it will be said: they could have done good & did not.

You heard today in the first reading the accusations: "Death to that Jeremiah! He's demoralizing the soldiers and all of the people with those speeches. That man doesn't promote the people's good, but their harm."

See how the accusations against the prophets of all times are the same. When the prophet bothers the consciences of the selfish, or of those who are not building with God's plans, he is a nuisance and must be eliminated, murdered, thrown into a pit, persecuted, not allowed to speak the word that annoys.

But the prophet could not tell them anything else. Read in the Bible how Jeremiah often prays to God, "Lord, take this cross away from me. I don't want to be a prophet. I feel my insides burning because I have to say things even I don't like."

It's always the same. The prophet has to speak of society's sin and call to conversion, as the church is doing today in San Salvador: pointing out whatever would enthrone sin in El Salvador's history and calling sinners to be converted, just as Jeremiah did.

A society's or political community's reason for being is not the security of the state but the human person. Christ said, "Man is not for the Sabbath, the Sabbath is for man." He puts human beings as the objective of all laws and all institutions. Humans are not for the state, the state is for them.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: "You have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted."

But there is an "atheism" that is closer at hand (than Marxism) and more dangerous to our church. It is the atheism of capitalism, in which material possessions are set up as idols and take God's place. Vatican II is the one that points it out: "Atheism arises at time. . . from wrongly making certain human goods into absolutes, so that they are then substitutes for God. Present-day civilization, not in itself, but because it is too much wrapped up in earthly affairs, can often make it harder to approach God."

Here, in a capitalism that idolizes money and "human goods", is a danger for us as serious as the other, and perhaps more than the other, which gets the blame for all evils. Which is more serious: to deny God out of a false idea of human liberation, or to deny him out of selfishness raised to the level of idolatry?

Who are the greater hypocrites, those who believe in this world to the point of denying openly what is transcendent, or those who use what is transcendent and religious as a tool and justification for their idolatry of the earth?

God in Christ dwells near at hand to us. Christ has given us a guideline: "I was hungry and you gave me to eat." Where someone is hungry, there is Christ near at hand. "I was thirsty and you gave me to drink." When someone comes to your house to ask for water, it is Christ, if you look with faith.

In the sick person longing for a visit Christ tells you, "I was sick and you came to visit me." Or in prison.

How many today are ashamed to testify for the innocent! What terror has been sown among our people that friends betray friends whom they see in trouble! If we could see that Christ is the needy one, the torture victim, the prisoner, the murder victim, and in each human figure so shamefully thrown by our roadsides could see Christ himself cast aside, we would pick him up like a medal of gold to be kissed lovingly. We would never be ashamed of him.

How far people are today -- especially those who torture and kill and value their investments more than human beings -- from realizing that all the earth's millions are good for nothing, are worthless, compared to a human being. The person is Christ, and in the person viewed and treated with faith we look on Christ the Lord.

The Third Work of Justice and Peace: + Make injustice visible ---- witness, remember, teach, proclaim, tell. Light candles, do not curse the darkness.

Let us be today's Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today's church. With Christ's light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation in merely human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God's image, which is soiled in today's humanity, a

humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful.

What good are beautiful highways and airports, beautiful buildings full of spacious apartments, if they are only put together with the blood of the poor, who are not going to enjoy them?

I denounce especially the absolutizing of wealth. This is the great evil in El Salvador: wealth, private property, as an untouchable absolute. Woe to the one who touches that high tension wire! It burns.

When we preach the Lord's word, we decry not only the injustices of the social order We decry every sin that is night, that is darkness: drunkenness, gluttony, lust, adultery, abortion, everything that is the reign of iniquity and sin. Let them all disappear from our society.

A religion of Sunday Mass but of unjust weeks does not please the Lord. A religion of much praying but with hypocrisy in the heart is not Christian. A church that sets itself up only to be well off, to have a lot of money and comfort, but that forgets to protest injustices, would not be the true church of our divine Redeemer.

It is not an advantage of great value to be well off on this earth by betraying Christ and his church. It is an advantage that is very cheap, one that is to be left behind with this life. It is terrible to hear from the lips of Christ: "Depart from me, wicked, accursed ones. I do not know you. I will be ashamed of whoever is ashamed of me."

Those who put their faith in the Risen One and work for a world more just, who protests against the injustices of the present system, against the abuses of unjust authorities, against the wrongfulness of humans exploiting humans, all those who begin their struggle with the resurrection of the great Liberator - they alone are authentic Christians.

To those who bear in their hand, or in their consciences, the burden of bloodshed, of outrages, of the victimized, innocent or guilty, but still victimized in their human dignity, I say: be converted. You cannot find God on those paths of torture and outrages. God is found on the ways of justice, of conversion, of truth.

What I want to say here in the cathedral pulpit is what the church is, and in the name of the church I want to support what is good, applaud it, encourage it, console the victims of atrocities, of injustices, and also with courage disclose the atrocities, the tortures, the disappearances of prisoners, the social injustice. This is not engaging in politics; this is building up the church and carrying out the church's duty as imposed by the church's identity. My conscience is undisturbed, and I call on all of you: let us build up the true church!

A prophetic people, as today's gospel says, seeks out those who are wrong so as to win them for God, and the prophet who speaks of the punishment due the negligent sentinel also praises the mercy of the God who calls. Therefore, dear brothers and sisters, especially those of you who hate me, you dear brothers and sisters who think I am preaching violence, who defame me and know it isn't true, you that have hands stained with murder, with torture, with atrocity, with injustice -- be converted. I love you deeply. I am sorry for you because you go on the way to ruin.

Everyone who struggles for justice, everyone who makes just claims in unjust surroundings, is working for God's reign, even though not a Christian. The church does not comprise all of God's reign, God's reign goes beyond the church's boundaries. The church values everything that is in tune with its struggle to set up God's reign. A church that tries only to keep itself pure and uncontaminated would not be a church of God's service to people.

The authentic church is one that does not mind conversing with prostitutes and publicans and sinners, as Christ did -- and with Marxists and those of various political movements -- in order to bring them salvation's true message.

The church in Latin America has much to say about humanity. It looks at the sad picture portrayed by the Puebla conference: faces of landless peasants, mistreated and killed by the forces of power, faces of laborers arbitrarily dismissed and without a living wage for their families, faces of the elderly, faces of outcasts, faces of slum dwellers, faces of poor children who from infancy begin to feel the cruel sting of social injustice. For them, it seems, there is no future -- no school, no high school, no university. By what right have we cataloged persons as first-class persons or second-class persons? In the theology of human nature there is only one class: children of God.

The Fourth Work of Justice and Peace: + Protect the poor and powerless---- listen, learn, educate, organize, empower participation, and respect life from the moment of conception to the time of natural death.

Nothing is so important to the church as human life, as the human person, above all, the person of the poor and the oppressed. Besides being human beings, they are also divine beings, since Jesus said that whatever is done to them he takes as done to him. That bloodshed, those deaths, are beyond all politics. They touch the very heart of God.

Another thing the church does in El Salvador is its commitment to defend the poor. The poor masses of our land find in the church the voice of Israel's prophets. There are among us those who sell the just for money and the poor for a pair of sandals, as the prophets said. There are those who pile up spoils and plunder in their palaces, who crush the poor, who bring on a reign of violence while reclining on beds of ivory, who join house to house and field to field so as to take up all there is and remain alone in the land. These texts of the prophets are not distant voices that we read with reverence in our liturgy. They are daily realities, whose cruelty and vehemence we live each day. And therefore, the church suffers the fate of the poor, which is persecution.

Even when all despaired at the hour when Christ was dying on the cross, Mary, serene, awaited the hour of the resurrection. Mary is the symbol of the people who suffer oppression and injustice. Theirs is the calm suffering that awaits the resurrection. It is Christian suffering, the suffering of the church, which does not accept the present injustices but awaits without rancor the moment when the Risen One will return to give us the redemption we await.

To be a Christian now means to have the courage to preach the true teaching of Christ and not be afraid of it, not be silent out of fear and preach something easy that won't cause problems.

To be a Christian in this hour means to have the courage that the Holy Spirit gives in the sacrament of confirmation, to be valiant soldiers of Christ the King, to make his teaching prevail, to reach hearts and proclaim to them the courage that one must have to defend God's law.

This is why the church has great conflicts: it accuses of sin. It says to the rich: do not sin by misusing your money. It says to the powerful: Do not misuse your political influence. Do not misuse your weaponry. Do not misuse your power. Don't you see that is a sin? It says to sinful torturers: Do not torture. You are sinning. You are doing wrong. You are establishing the reign of hell on earth.

It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.

What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses: proclaims to the people God's wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God's reign, so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws -- out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and of humanity. This is the hard service of the word.

But God's Spirit goes with the prophet, with the preacher, for he is Christ, who keeps on proclaiming his reign to the people of all times.

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God's promise. He comes to free us from

sin, and the church knows that sin's consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.

For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth's glory, believes that in each person is the Creator's image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As holy defender of God's rights and of his images, the church must cry out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers. They suffer as God's images. There is no dichotomy between man and God's image.

Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom.

Death is the sign of sin, and sin produces death right in our midst: violence, murder, torture (which leaves so many dead), hacking with machetes, throwing into the sea -- people discarded! All this is the reign of hell.

When Father Rafael Palacios was murdered in Santa Tecla, and his body was laid out here, I said that he was still preaching, calling attention not only to crimes outside the church, but to sins within the church. The prophet also decries sins inside the church. And why not? We bishops, popes, priests, nuns, Catholic educators -- we are human, and as humans we are sinful and we need someone to be a prophet for us too and call us to conversion and not let us set up religion as something untouchable. Religion needs prophets, and thank God we have them, because it would be a sad church that felt itself owner of the truth and rejected everything else. A church that only condemns, a church that sees sin only in others and does not look at the beam in its own eye, is not the authentic church of Christ.

The Fifth Work of Justice and Peace: +Work for reconciliation with truth, evangelism, catechesis, orthopraxis.

I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.

I'm deeply impressed by that moment when Christ stands alone before the world figured in Pilate. The truth is left alone, his own followers have been afraid. Truth is fearfully daring, and only heroes can follow the truth. So much so that Peter, who has said he will die if need be, flees like a coward and Christ stands alone.

Let's not be afraid to be left alone if it's for the sake of the truth. Let's be afraid to be demagogs, coveting the people's sham flattery. If we don't tell them the truth, we commit the worst sin: betraying the truth and betraying the people. Christ would rather be left alone, but able to say before the world figured in Pilate: Everyone who hears my voice belongs to the truth.

Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land were lifted up to the Lord with horror of their stain to pray that he might cleanse them. But let those who, thanks to God, have clean hands -- the children, the sick, the suffering -- lift up their innocent and suffering hands to the Lord like the people of Israel in Egypt. The Lord will have pity and will say, as he did to Moses in Egypt, "I have heard my people's cry of wailing. It is the prayer that God cannot fail to hear.

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. That is how today's gospel reading shows him, 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.

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. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.

Who knows if the one whose hands are bloodied with Father Grande's murder, or the one who shot Father Navarro, if those who have killed, who have tortured, who have done so much evil, are listening to me? Listen, there in your criminal hideout, perhaps already repentant, you too are called to forgiveness.

A preaching that does not point out sin is not the preaching of the gospel. A preaching that makes sinners feel good so that they become entrenched in their sinful state, betrays the gospel's call. A preaching that does not discomfit sinners but lulls them in their sin leaves Zebulun and Naphtali in the shadow of death.

A preaching that awakens, a preaching that enlightens -- as when a light turned on awakens and of course annoys a sleeper -- that is the preaching of Christ, calling, "wake up! Be converted!" this is the church's authentic preaching. Naturally, such preaching must meet conflict, must spoil what is miscalled prestige, must disturb, must be persecuted. It cannot get along with the powers of darkness and sin.

And so, brothers and sisters, I repeat again what I have said here so often, addressing by radio those who perhaps have caused so many injustices and acts of violence, those who have brought tears to so many homes, those who have stained themselves with the blood of so many murders, those who have hands soiled with tortures, those who have calloused their consciences, who are unmoved to see under their boots a person abased, suffering, perhaps ready to die. To all of them I say: no matter your crimes. They are ugly and horrible, and you have abased the highest dignity of a human person, but God calls you and forgives you. And here perhaps arises the aversion of those who feel they are laborers from the first hour. How can I be in heaven with those criminals? Brothers and sisters, in heaven there are no criminals. The greatest criminal, once he has repented of his sins, is now a child of God.

The Sixth Work of Justice and Peace: +Celebrate life, goodness, beauty, virtue, responsibility, and joy. Practice peace, non-violence, servant leadership, harmony, community, voluntary cooperation, and the proper stewardship of God's creation. Pray without ceasing.

One of the signs of the present time is the idea of participation, the right that all persons have to participate in the construction of their own common good. For this reason, one of the most dangerous abuses of the present time is repression, the attitude that says, "Only we can govern, no one else, get rid of them"

Everyone can contribute much that is good, and in that way trust is achieved. The common good will not be attained by excluding people. We can't enrich the common good of our country by driving out those we don't care for. We have to try to bring out all that is good in each person and try to develop and atmosphere of trust, not with physical force, as though dealing with irrational beings, but with a moral force that draws out the good that is in everyone, especially in concerned young people.

Thus, with all contributing their own interior life, their own responsibility, their own way of being, all can build the beautiful structure of the common good, the good that we construct together and that creates conditions of kindness, of trust, of freedom, of peace.

Then we can, all of us together, build the republic -- the res publica, the public concern -- what belongs to all of us and what we all have the duty of building.

Let us not be disheartened, even when the horizon of history grows dim and closes in, as though human realities made impossible the accomplishment of God's plans. God makes use even of human errors, even of human sins, so as to make rise over the darkness what Isaiah spoke of. One day prophets will sing not only the return from Babylon but our full liberation. "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They walk in lands of shadows, but a light has shone forth."

To believe, to hope: this is the Christian's grace in our time. When many give up hope, when it seems to them the nation has nowhere to go, as though it were all over, the Christian says: No, we have not yet begun. We are still awaiting God's grace. With certainty, it is just beginning to be built on this earth, and we will be a blessed nation and will escape from so much evil. A time will come when there will be no abductions, when we'll be happy and can walk our streets and our countryside without fear of being tortured or kidnaped.

The Seventh Work of Justice and Peace: + Ensure fair distribution, subsidiarity, economic opportunity, justice, and food security for everyone everywhere.

The great need today is for Christians who are active and critical, who don't accept situations without analyzing them inwardly and deeply. We no longer want masses of people like those who have been trifled with for so long. We want persons like fruitful fig trees, who can say yes to justice and no to injustice and can make use of the precious gift of life, regardless of the circumstances.

Many would like the poor to keep on saying that it is God's will for them to live that way. But it is not God's will for some to have everything and others to have nothing. That cannot be of God. God's will is that all his children be happy.

If we had time, we might examine at this point the message of Puebla calling for the building of a civilization of love. But I just want to say one thing. Many think that this call for love is ineffectual, is inadequate, is weak. This notion is so fixed that some of the journalists who interview me often ask me, "Do you, who preach love, believe that love can settle this? Don't you think that violence is the only way if in the course of history only violence has achieved changes?"

I tell them, "If in fact that is how it has been, it is also a fact that humans have not yet used the power that is distinctively theirs. Humans are not characterized by brute force, they are not mere animals. Humans are characterized by reason and by low."

A civilization of love that did not demand justice of people would not be a true civilization: it would not delineate genuine human relations. It is a caricature of love to try to cover over with alms what is lacking in justice, to patch over with an appearance of benevolence when social justice is missing. True love begins by demanding what is just in the relations of those ho love.

The Christian must work to exclude sin and establish God's reign. To struggle for this is not communism. To struggle for this is not to mix in politics. It is simply that the gospel demands of today's Christian more commitment to history.

Let us not tire of preaching love, it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out, it is the only thing that can.

How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand that their work, their job, is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metal-worker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office!

How may cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cabs, you are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if you work with honesty, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab.

Our people sense that Mary is part of our people's soul. All Latin American peoples feel this. No one has entered so deeply into our people's heart as Mary. She is the image, the likeness, of a church that wants to be present with the gospel's life in the civilizations of the world's peoples, as God wants her to be, in their social, economic, and political transformation.

With Christ, God has injected himself into history. With the birth of Christ, God's reign is now inaugurated in human time.

On this night, as every year for twenty centuries, we recall that God's reign is now in this world and that Christ has inaugurated the fullness of time. His birth attests that God is now marching with us in history, that we do not go alone.

Humans long for peace, for justice, for a reign of divine law, for something holy, for what is far from earth's realities. We can have such a hope, not because we ourselves are able to construct the realm of happiness that God's holy words proclaim, but because the builder of a reign of justice, of love, and of peace is already in the midst of us.

Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty. In it each one has a place in this beautiful family, which the Epiphany brightens for us with God's light.

When Christ appeared in those lands, curing the sick, raising the dead, preaching to the poor, bringing hope to the peoples, something began on earth like when a stone is cast into a quiet lake and starts ripples that finally reach the farthest shores. Christ appeared in Zebulun and Naphtali with the signs of liberation, shaking off oppressive yokes, bringing joy to hearts, sowing hope. And this is what God is doing now in history.

To follow faithfully the pope's magisterium in theory is very easy. But when you try to live those savings teachings, try to incarnate them, try to make them reality in the history of a suffering people like ours -- that is when conflicts arise. Dear friends, if we are really Catholics, follows of an authentic gospel -- and therefore a difficult gospel -- if we really want to live up to the name of followers of Christ, let us not be afraid to transform into flesh and blood, into living history, this teaching, which from the pages of the gospel becomes present reality in the teaching of the councils and of the popes, who try to live like true shepherds through the vicissitudes of their times.

How beautiful will be the day when a new society, instead of selfishly hoarding and keeping, apportions, shares, divides up, and all rejoice because we all feel we are children of the same God!

Poverty is a force for liberation because, in addition to being an accusation of sin and a force of Christian spirituality, it is a commitment. . . Listen to what the Medellin conference says: "Poverty, as a commitment that takes on voluntarily and out of love the condition of the needy of this world, in order to witness to the evil their condition represents and to spiritual freedom from wealth, follows in this the example of Christ, who made his own all the consequences of the sinful condition of humans and, "being rich, became poor" in order to save us."

This is the commitment of being a Christian to follow Christ in his incarnation. If Christ, the God of majesty, became a lowly human and lived with the poor and even died on a cross like a slave, our Christian faith should also be lived in the same way. The Christian who does not want to live this commitment of solidarity with the poor is not worthy to be called Christian.

Redaction by Robert Waldrop. English translations of quotes from Romero's sermons taken from the book the Violence of Love, English translation by James Brockman, SJ

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