The Scandal of Redemption. Oscar Romero

be given to all so that all can share in the blessings God gives through the land…. There will be no true reconciliation between our people and God as long as there is no just distribution, as long as the goods of our Salvadoran land do not bring benefits and happiness to all Salvadorans.

      LET US LOOK THIS MORNING, sisters and brothers, on this church which extends far beyond the tiny geographical speck which is El Salvador. We feel that we are sisters and brothers with all the peoples of Central America, of this continent of North America, of Canada, of Europe. And we are all called to follow this light.

      What is marvelous to consider is that in this convocation of peoples God – the God of nations – respects the freedom, the customs, and the unique way of being of each people. The reading from Isaiah tells us, “The riches of the sea shall be emptied before you, and the wealth of nations shall be brought to you” (Isa. 60:5). This kingdom of God certainly has no need of our material goods, but we recognize that God is the origin of our coffee crops, our sugar cane, our cotton fields, all our wealth, and all the wealth of the world, and he has a right to all of these things. So we generously offer these things to God, recognizing that he owns them all, just as the magi placed gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the Christ Child’s crib. Everything that the world produces is God’s. The true wealth of the church as God’s kingdom is the realization that all the differences among the world’s peoples come from God. God has created in this world a kingdom rich like no other because all the marvels of the earth are his. Everything produced by human cultures belongs to God. It is God who promotes and guides all the wealth and progress of the peoples.

      Under the sign of bread and wine the priests of all latitudes of the world tell the Lord that we are offering him, in this bread and in this wine, the work of human hands. When we say “the work of human hands,” we understand this to be the work of all the latitudes of the world. We offer it all to God because without God human labors and human progress have no meaning. We all contribute to this kingdom of God.

      DIARY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1978

      In the afternoon I went to celebrate Mass in the village of La Loma in the territory of San Pedro Perulapán, a Mass offered for two murdered peasants who were found near the Apulo Highway. I was surprised by the size of the crowd waiting for me. I addressed words of comfort to them. The mothers, wives, children, and other family members and friends of those murdered were present there.

      All of them reflected the fear being sowed in these sectors of our dear people—fear that is justified by the repression and abuse of authority by the security forces and, especially, by the armed peasant groups like the organization ORDEN. In fact, while we celebrated Mass, they appeared with their curved knives, some of them unsheathed, and they stood where they could watch the crowd. They wrote down the license number of the van in which we had come with the sisters. And there was an aggressive attitude, or, at least, a mistrustful wariness. I understood the peasants’ fears, why many men sleep somewhere other than at their homes for fear of being taken by surprise at night.

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      The Word Made Flesh

      CHRIST IS BEING BORN FOR US today. That is what the prophet Isaiah has told us: “A child has been born to us; a child has been given to us” (Isa. 9:6). He is here now for us.

      Let us truly experience it this way, because I know that each one of you feels the need, just as I do, to embrace as our very own child that Jesus who is born for all and who, in giving himself to all, gives himself to me in particular. Indeed, each of us can speak in the first person as does Saint Paul: “He loved me, and he handed himself over for me” (Gal. 2:20). Let each of us truly proclaim, “The Lord is the redeemer of my family; he is my companion in life, my confidant in time of anguish, my own redeemer who is at the same time the redeemer of all.”

      “GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life” (John 3:16). That is the reason for the coming of the messenger of eternal life, the only Son of God, the One who in his divine essence has received the quality of Word, of Son. He is the whole eternal nature of God, the whole of life without end, the light that disperses all shadows, the solution of all problems, the love of all who despair, the joy of all who are sad. Whoever possesses this Son of God lacks for nothing.

      IF WE WANT TO FIND the child Jesus today, we shouldn’t contemplate the lovely figures in our nativity scenes. We should look for him among the malnourished children who went to bed tonight without anything to eat. We should look for him among the poor newspaper boys who will sleep tonight on doorsteps, wrapped in their papers…. In taking all this upon himself, the God of the poor is showing us the redemptive value of human suffering. He is showing us the value it has for redeeming the poverty and suffering which are the world’s cross.

      There is no redemption without the cross, but that does not mean our poor people should be passive. We were indoctrinating the poor when we told them, “It is God’s will for you to live poor and hopeless on the margins of society.” That is not true! God in no way wants social injustice….. The greatest violence comes from those who deprive so many people of happiness, from those who are killing the many people who are starving. God is telling the poor, as he told the oppressed Christ when he was carrying his cross, “You will save the world by making your suffering a protest of salvation and by not conforming to what God does not want. You will save the world if you die in your poverty while yearning for better times, making your whole life a prayer, and embodying everything that seeks to liberate the people from this situation.”

      MARY KNEW HOW TO ENDURE flight into exile, marginalization, poverty, oppression. Mary was the daughter of a people dominated by the Roman Empire. She saw her son taken prisoner and tortured. She saw him die unjustly on the cross. Mary cries out in holy defiance, declaring that God “will send the proud and the arrogant away empty-handed and, if necessary, bring the mighty down from their thrones. At the same time he will give his grace to the lowly, to those who trust in his mercy” (Luke 1:52–53).

      By being born this way, Christ has a lesson for the poor countries and the humble hostels; he has a lesson for those freezing at night in the coffee harvest and those sweating by day in the cotton fields. He is teaching them that all this signifies something and that we shouldn’t miss the meaning of suffering. Dear brothers and sisters, if there is one thing that makes me sad in this hour of El Salvador’s redemption, it is the thought that many false redeemers are allowing the suffering that is our people’s force of redemption to go to waste. They use the people’s hunger and marginalization for demagoguery. The people’s suffering should not be made a motive for resentment and desperation; it should make people look to the justice of God and realize that this situation must change. And if necessary, like those who have already given their lives, we must be ready to die, but always with the hope that comes from our Christian faith.