We're watching Romero tonight!

We'll be watching the movie Romero tonight for anyone who wants to join at 7PM at St. Luke's Parish House, 431 7th Street in Hollister. If you're reading the book I'd encourage you to rent or borrow a copy of this movie and watch it. It is a fairly faithful retelling of Romero's story and gives a good sense of the context in which his words were written.

Chapter 4: Don’t Pull Them Up

This chapter’s title refers to the weeds among the wheat, and reflects Romero’s attitude toward those who persecuted the church and ultimately killed him. In this chapter we begin to see more of the awful reality in which Romero and his contemporaries were immersed, and his response of very personal, incredibly deep faith.

“God is the exquisite likeness of a mother with child. God bore me in his womb and loved me and destined me and already thought of my days and of my death. What will happen to me doesn’t matter to me; God already knows it. Let us not be afraid, brothers and sisters. We are living through difficult and uncertain days. We do not know if this very evening we will be prisoners or murder victims. We do not know what the forces of evil will do with us. But one thing I do know: even those who have disappeared after arrest, even those who are mourned in the mystery of an abduction, are known and loved by God. If God allows these disappearances it is not because he is helpless. He loves us, he keeps on loving.” P. 72
Such a beautiful feminine metaphor for God, and an incredible, “nevertheless” faith.


“… we must lose ourselves in the beauty, in the sublimity of God, giving him thanks for favors received, begging pardon for our infidelities, praying to him when the limitations of our power clash with the greatness asked of us. We must learn to understand that we have such a capacity and that God desires to fill up that capacity.” P. 79
Great people like Romero and Mother Teresa, people whose lives have been spent in love, are not greater than the rest of us, but have submitted more to the greatness God wills for them, and for all of us. Immersed in prayer, they have allowed God to “fill up their capacity” for selfless love.


“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.” P. 88
This message of love and call to conversion of those who considered themselves his enemies is a constant refrain in Romero’s preaching.


“God does not identify with human thinking. Many indeed would like, as the song says, a pocket-God, a God to get along with their idols, a God satisfied with the way they pay their workers… How can people pray the Our Father to that God when they treat him as one of their servants or one of their employees?” P. 90
God's thinking turns human thinking on its head. Do we want a pocket-God, or will we allow ourselves to be challenged, stretched, and toppled by the word of the Living God?

Chapter 3: The Idol of Self

“Holy Week is a call to follow Christ’s austerities, the only legitimate violence, the violence that he does to himself and that he invites us to do to ourselves: “Let those who would follow me deny themselves,” be violent to themselves, repress in themselves the outbursts of pride, kill in their hearts the outbursts of greed, of avarice, of conceit, of arrogance… this is what must be killed, this is the violence that must be done, so that out of it a new person may arise, the only one who can build a new civilization: a civilization of love.”
This is the violence of love of which Romero speaks—killing the idol of self.


“A Christian’s authenticity is show in difficult hours… it is in difficult hours that the church grows in authenticity. Blest be God for this difficult hour in our archdiocese. Let us be worthy of it.” P. 43-44
Amazing to read that Romero blesses God for the “difficult hour” his church and country are living through—the murder of priests and lay-workers, the disappearances, the slaughter of the innocent. He blesses God for all of this! But blesses in the sense of the Beatitudes… “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven…” (Matthew 5:11-12)


“A church that doesn’t provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn’t unsettle, a word of God that doesn’t get under anyone’ skin, a word of God that doesn’t touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed—what gospel is that? Very nice, pious considerations that don’t bother anyone, that’s the way many would like preaching to be. Those preachers who avoid every thorny matter so as not to be harassed, so as not to have conflicts and difficulties, do no light up the y world they live in.” p. 44
Very challenging words for any preacher and every Christian! Do we light up the world that we live in?


“Even when they call us mad, when they call us subversives and communists and all the epithets they put on us, we know that we only preach the subversive witness of the Beatitudes, which have turned everything upside down to proclaim blessed the poor, blessed the thirsting for justice, blessed the suffering.” P. 48
See Matthew 5: 3-11 & Luke 6: 20-26 Amen to the upside-down logic of God!


“Suffering will always be. It is a heritage of the first sin and a consequence of the other sins that God permits, even after the redemption. But the redemption converts into power of salvation when suffering is undergone in union of faith, hope, and love with the Redeemer’s divine suffering and cross. Suffering is the shadow of God’s hand, which blesses and pardons; and suffering unites people in solidarity and draws them near to God.” P. 51
This is another very difficult one to wrap one’s mind/heart around. Suffering is a consequence of human sin, yet God allows suffering, and suffering can be sanctified, made holy, if we suffer for/in God’s love. What do you think? What is your experience?


“God has eternity before him. Only God has security. It is for us to follow humbly wherever God wants to lead, and blessed are those who stay faithful to the ways God inspires them to go and who do not, in order to please others, live with an uneasy conscience in the place where others believe security is to be found.” P. 58

Chapter 2: A History of Salvation

I feel like in this second chapter Romero’s words cut deeper, are yet more challenging. Or perhaps it is that as we grow accustomed to Romero’s voice, we can listen more deeply. Of the many I’ve starred and underlined, here are a few quotes which particularly stood out, and some reflections/questions on them:

“Faith consists in accepting God without asking him to account for things according to our standard. Faith consists in reacting before God as Mary did: I don’t understand it, Lord, but let it be done in me according to your word.” (p. 23)
How many of our faith questions are really asking God to account for things according to our standard? Is the kind of faith Romero describes an “easy way out?”—blind faith? Can we, as Mary, love God unconditionally?

“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.” (p. 26)
For me this full, complete understanding of humanity as the image of God brings with it what we promise to uphold in our baptismal covenant: a deep respect for the dignity of every human being. In this way, the suffering of every person who suffers unjustly, whether Christian or not, becomes a martyrdom, because in them the image of God is desecrated. And as Romero points out in the quote from chapter 1 (p. 6) the one who brutalizes other also tramples the image of God in himself.

“…one cannot live a gospel that is too angelical, a gospel of compliance, a gospel that is not dynamic peace, a gospel that is not of demanding dimensions in regard to temporal matters also.” (p. 27)

“The World does not say: blessed are the poor. The world says: blessed are the rich. You are worth as much as you have. But Christ says: wrong. Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven, because they do not put their trust in what is so transitory.” (p. 33)
My experience in El Salvador has taught me the truth of Romero’s words: the blessedness of poverty lies in this: that the poor know their need of God.

“The degree to which you approach [the poor], and the love with which you approach them, or the scorn with which you approach them—that is how you approach your God. What you do to them, you do to God. The way you look at them is the way you look at God.” (p. 35) Romero takes Matthew 25—“What you have done to the least of my brothers and sisters you have done to me”—and really helps us understand what we mean. What is our habitual reaction to poor people? What is our reaction to Romero saying that that is how we react to God?

Chapter 1: A Pilgrim Church

I hadn’t realized on prior reading that, though the chapter titles suggest themes, the quotes in this book are arranged chronologically and not thematically, so we’ll get a sense of both the continuity and also the development of Romero’s thought in his three years as Archbishop. The very last quote in the book is taken from the homily he preached minutes before he was shot during the offertory of the Eucharist in the chapel of the cancer hospital where he lived.
Here are some quotes that jumped out at me on reading chapter 1:

“We must save not the soul at the hour of death but the human person living in history.” (p. 4)

“Of those who are condemned it will be said: They could have done good and did not.” (p. 4)

“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.” (p. 7)

“How I would like to engrave this great idea on each one’s heart: Christianity is not a collection of truths to be believed, of laws to be obeyed, of prohibitions. This makes it very distasteful. Christianity is a person, one who loved us so much, one who calls for our love. Christianity is Christ.” (p. 8-9)

“We cannot segregate God’s word from the historical reality in which it is proclaimed. It would not then be God’s word. It would be history, it would be a pious book, a Bible that is just a book in our library. It becomes God’s word because it vivifies, enlightens, contrast, repudiates, praises what is going on today in this society. “ (p. 11-12)

“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 in to sickles for work.” (p. 12)

What is your reaction to these quotes? What others that stood out for you?

How do you find yourself responding, intellectually and emotionally, to Romero’s words?

Note: reading the notes at the end of the book will help put the quotations in context.

About the book

The Violence of Love by Oscar Romero is available for free download in English or Spanish at www.plough.com/ebooks/violenceoflove.html, and is available from booksellers.

It is in one sense, very "readable" because it consists of short quotes from Romero's sermons; in another sense it is a difficult read because some of Romero's words can be quite challenging. We can debate, agree or disagree with what he says; seriously engaging Romero always raises important questions for me, deepens my faith, and helps me keep my perspective.

Here are what the reviewers had to say about The Violence of Love:

Oscar Romero was converted by suffering: the suffering of a friend, of the people he served, and then finally his own suffering. There are many ways to be converted, but perhaps the best way is to live among the poor and to discover in them as Romero did, the presence of Christ.

-- Samuel Ruiz Garcia, Bishop of San Cristobal, Chiapas Mexico

Romero does not speak from a distance. He does not hide his fears, his brokenness, his hesitations. It is as if he puts his arm around my shoulder and slowly walks with me. He shares my struggles. There is a warmth in his words that opens my heart to listen.

-- Henri J. M. Nouwen, from the Forward

These homilies reveal lines of poetic beauty describing a cruel and ugly world. Here is indomitable courage and utter humility. Here is a message of hope.

-- Robert McAfee Brown, Professor Emeritus, Pacific School of Religion