Oscar Romero was a deeply religious child. When he was a young lad he could often be found in one of the two churches in his home village. His father had him trained as a carpenter, something at which evidently he excelled, but when he grew to be a man he trained for the priesthood and was eventually ordained a priest in Rome in April 1942. After spending some time in Rome he returned to his homeland of El Salvador and worked for twenty years as a parish priest. He rose through the ranks of the Roman Catholic Church and was in favour with the government of his day. To all intents and purposes Romero seemed set to be a career priest until something happened which changed the whole direction of his life and ministry. The same year he was consecrated Archbishop of San Salvador, his great friend, Rutilio Grande, who had been working as a progressive Jesuit priest creating self-reliance groups among the poor, was assassinated by a government sponsored death squad. Speaking of the murder of his friend, Romero said, “When I looked at Rutilio lying there dead I thought, ‘If they have killed him for doing what he did, then I too have to walk the same path’.” Romero changed and revealed a radicalism which apparently had not been there before. Undeterred by the fact the government refused to investigate Fr Rutilio’s murder he began preaching against the repression of the poor and the violation of basic human rights by the government of his native land. On the 24th March, thirty years ago this year, as Oscar Romero elevated the chalice at the end of the prayer of consecration while celebrating Mass in a small hospital chapel a shot from an M16 assault rifle rang out: as he fell dying his blood mingled with that of the blood of Christ in the Chalice.
This last week, Holy Week, we remembered how another death squad came for a young Jewish Radical. We read in Holy Scripture the accounts of his betrayal, his illegal trial and the stamping out of his life by a brutal military dictatorship. We read of the devastation experienced by his closest friends and followers and the moving account of our Lady, his mother, standing by the cross of her Son. We heard him in the midst of his agonies ask God to forgive those who were murdering him and we saw his love for his mother as he committed her to the care of St John. The story is frankly harrowing and I for one am left emotionally drained at the end of the various liturgies of Holy Week. It is a story with eternal significance if for no other reason than the fact that it has been repeated endlessly throughout history – the crucified Christ stands as a poignant symbol of the vulnerable crushed by the powerful.
Shortly before his death Oscar Romero said in a sermon, “If they kill me, I shall arise in the Salvadoran people. If the threats come to be fulfilled, from this moment I offer my blood to God for the redemption and resurrection of El Salvador. Let my blood be a seed of freedom and the sign that hope will soon be reality”. Jesus also saw his death as a redemptive act offered to God and told his disciples that he would rise again from the dead. It must have been very difficult for those, mostly women, who stood by his cross and watched him die in agony, to believe that any good could come out of this brutality; or that they, having seen him expire, could ever hope to recapture the relationship that they had once enjoyed with this warm and most human of men. Certainly Mary Magdalene, in John’s moving account of the resurrection, seems to come to the garden with no such hope. She comes to the tomb to mourn him and finding it empty is further traumatised thinking his body has been stolen, that is until a figure appears to her who she, in her grief, imagines is the gardener and utters her name in a familiar voice. “Master!” she gasps in recognition. In that moment the risen Christ shows to her and to us that suffering, tyranny and death have not and will not have the last word.
Isaiah shared with Romero a vision of political redemption – they both believed that God’s grace would transform history and there would be a new earth and a new heaven. Mary Magdalene experienced a deeply personal encounter with the risen Christ. In the light of this I think one can argue that scripture teaches us that resurrection has a twofold application or put another way a sociological element and a personal element. Oscar Romero seemed to be inferring as much when he said, “There can be no true liberation until people are freed from sin. All the liberationist groups that spring up in our land should bear this in mind. The first liberation to be proposed by a political group that truly wants the people’s liberation must be to free oneself from sin. While one is a slave of sin – of selfishness, violence, cruelty, and hatred – one is not fitted for the people’s liberation”.
Oppression therefore manifests itself as the product of human sin. Sometimes it reveals itself in highly personalised and localised ways at other times in national or international movements, but the fact of the resurrection which we are here today to celebrated leaves us with the conviction that however powerful oppression may appear it does not finally win the day. Men and women build walls of hatred and division. They persecute one another, projecting their own sense of guilt onto those they perceive as their enemies. Christ has become the focus of all this, he has borne it in his body on the cross, defeating its power in his glorious resurrection and thus has set a pattern for the redemption of the world and of individuals who look to him in faith.
Thirty years ago this year Oscar Romero quite literally followed in the steps of his Lord. In the comfort of an Anglican Church in the heartland of Surrey it is perhaps tempting to imagine that these things happen in far flung parts of the earth. We can, if we want or, perhaps in the eyes of some, are foolish enough involve ourselves in the struggles of others who live thousands of miles away. Later today at the Zimbabwe embassy in London a contingent from our own Cathedral will be mounting a protest in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Christ in that troubled land. This action is a laudable voice against oppression. We may in the years to come however in this land of ours find that it is not easy to be a Christian and we too may become the oppressed. The growth of a militant form of secularism has for years been undermining the structures of our country which found their origins in the Christian faith. In many ways, often masquerading as enlightened liberalism, attempts are being made to silence the Christian voice. How, you might ask, am I to know what the voice of oppression sounds like, surely it is not quite as obvious as it was in El Salvador or is in Zimbabwe? The voice of oppression is the voice of the closed down heart, it is a voice, be it religious or secular that says “I am right and I allow no argument – you will conform to my vision of reality or I will crush you”. Do not heed nor obey such a voice, listen rather to the voice of the risen Christ who calls your name as he called Mary’s name, for that voice is the voice not of oppression and death but of liberation and eternal life.
A very happy Easter to you all.
