I have spent a lot of this semester thinking about what traits make Monseñor Romero such a vivid person in our history, one that still draws our attention today. I figured that their had to be one. specific. reason. that so many remember him.
But when beginning to plan this week, I realized that a lot about what Oscar Romero has taught me can not be put into words. I can tell you stories, both about myself and about women and men who I have encountered since I got my first glimpse of El Salvador and Oscar Romero’s life, but what I have gained is not one trait, or one lasting memory.
It instead is a lifestyle, a choosing of a reality so seemingly different from my own.
And as I read through his homilies, his letters & his thoughts, I’ve realized that what makes his memory unique, one worth living by, is that he also had to choose it, and by choosing it his memory gave way instead to a memory of a people.
When Romero was elected archbishop he was originally chosen because he was the “safe” choice. He was elected to ignore problems, not question them. But as we’ve experienced in this past year sometimes the problems become too close to ignore. For Oscar Romero the event that brought the problems too close was the death of a friend, Fr. Rutilio Grande, a fellow priest who had devoted his entire life to the poor.
This event caused him to remove the barrier of fear and “following the crowd” that stood between him and the poor. He replaced the barrier with accompaniment and conversations with those around him. And when he took the time to listen to them, their memories and thoughts grew from hurt places of self-doubt and shame and insead turned into blossoms of affirmation and community.
Their voices stopped being isolated and instead became remembrances, seeds of truth that Oscar Romero helped plant into the hearts of anyone who would listen. (Radio story) Before every homily Monsenor Romero would spend hours with his people in order to lift their voices and ask for help. (we dont hear about this as much)
It was for these voices that Oscar Romero died, becoming a martyr (and soon a saint!). He is called a martyr because he was a witness of the faith tradition, following the example of Jesus in his own context.
The gospel today comes from John and states very clearly “unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Jesus was talking about the crux of our faith. He was talking about his own death, and what specifically he asks of people who follow him. He was asking us to lose our lives, and Monsenor was someone who affirmed that call.
This story of Jesus is familiar, and it is the story that made my own experience in El Salvador last so much longer than one week. When I was there the worldview that was only the size of the midwest was blown open. I was hearing stories that I had never learned in a history class, and the developing world was no longer something I could remove myself from.
And being that far outside of my comfort zone was scary. I was feeling both more joy and more sadness than I had ever felt in my entire life, and the only thing that was the same was Jesus & the Christian tradition. It was the same religion, except it was through a new lens.
It was through this lens that the gospel today reminds us that losing our lives is not easy. What Jesus and Oscar Romero did was not easy. They both preached a death of selfishness, a death to a worldview that is comfortable.
In our own context there are a lot of forgotten voices, both on SLU’s campus and off of it. These are voices that our media has often forgotten about, our classrooms have often forgotten about, and we as the SLU community have forgotten. They live not only up the street or a few towns over but also in our residence halls. These voices have been forgotten because it is uncomfortable to listen to them. But that makes them even more important. They need to be listened to and raised, the same way Monsenor would raise the voices of his own community.
We too are called to be witnesses, probably not in martyrdom, but in our lives. As we move through this week and this semester we need to remember that not only are our voices important but so are our ears. We would not be standing here remembering Oscar Romero if he had turned away from the violence and protesting happening around him. He would have instead been just another priest who watched thousands of people disappear without a word. Our ears need to be pointed toward both our roommates and the stranger.
Our thoughts need to not be “my worldview is the right worldview” but instead we we must take off our shoes and stand with the holy and different lives that are all around us.
Again, this is difficult, and it means letting go of a lot of our own stories and biases and expectations that we set for other people. But this death to self does not get the final word, because as 1st Corinthians said, Jesus conquered death and instead brought new life. It’s what we’re going to celebrate at Easter mass in a few weeks and it’s what Oscar Romero lost his life for. That means there is hope.
And this hope is also something that we are about to celebrate in the form of the Eucharist. In El Salvador and here in St. Louis the Eucharist is always the same, and it is the constant nourishment we need to live in the uncomfortable space between the world we grew up in and the world we know exists just beyond our comfort zone.
I invite you all as we move through the rest of this service to think about the people in your own lives, friends & strangers alike, that need your conversion toward a wider worldview, and a space of deep listening.
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