Archbishop Oscar Anolfo Romero
Tomorrow, March 24th is a new commemoration of Lesser Feasts and Fast in the Episcopal Calendar that of Archbishop Oscar Archbishop Romero was hand picked to be a guardian of the powers that be in the name of the Church and was converted by the experiences of the common people of El Salvador. He became a prophetic voice and sought to be the ‘voice of the voiceless’ with in his country and to the world unaware of the strife in the country.
Archbishop Romero spoke the truth in love to both the left and the right in the struggle for civil discourse and basic human rights in El Salvador in the 1970′s. He was murdered by an unknown assassin as he celebrated the Funeral Eucharist.
Roughly two weeks before his death Romero said in an interview with a reporter, “You may say, if they succeed in killing me, that I pardon and bless those who do it. Would, indeed, that they might be convinced that they will waste their time. A bishop will die, but God’s church, which is the people, will never perish.”
Romero’s death, along with those of many more innocents, among them priests and nuns in El Salvador helped to wake up the world the the senseless violence that was a part of daily life in his country.
Just as Jesus’ crucifixion, Romero’s murder was shocking because it revealed, to those with eyes to see, the innocence of the victim. If even only for a time, such a shocking death that can arrest the spread of senseless violence with what Romero himself called “the violence of love.”
Were that it that would be enough to end such attacks. But alas no, just last week the Anglican Bishop of El Salvador was targeted by such violence revealing that we must attend to the Gospel in all places and at all times lest we become complacent and practice a docile kind of love rather than the violent love of prophetic witness that claims time, space and divine endorsement of the Kingdom of God.
As we prepare to enter Holy Week open our eyes to see the innocence of victims everywhere and dare to utter the prophetic words that “God’s church, which is the people, will never perish.” and so be the Voice of the Voiceless in our day as well.
