Oscar A. Romero

Let us be today__ Christians. Let us not take fright at the boldness of today__ church. With Christ__ light let us illuminate even the most hideous caverns of the human person: torture, jail, plunder, want, chronic illness. The oppressed must be saved, not with a revolutionary salvation, in mere human fashion, but with the holy revolution of the Son of Man, who dies on the cross to cleanse God__ image, which is soiled in today__ humanity, a humanity so enslaved, so selfish, so sinful.

I don__ want to be an anti, against anybody. I simply want to be the builder of a great affirmation: the affirmation of God,who loves us and who wants to save us.

For the church, the many abuses of human life, liberty, and dignity are a heartfelt suffering. The church, entrusted with the earth__ glory, believes that in each person is the Creator__ image and that everyone who tramples it offends God. As holy defender of God__ rights and of his images, the church must cry out. It takes as spittle in its face, as lashes on its back, as the cross in its passion, all that human beings suffer, even though they be unbelievers. They suffer as God__ images. There is no dichotomy between man and God__ image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being abuses God__ image, and the church takes as its own that cross, that martyrdom.

When we struggle for human rights, for freedom, for dignity, when we feel that it is a ministry of the church to concern itself for those who are hungry, for those who have no schools, for those who are deprived, we are not departing from God__ promise. He comes to free us from sin, and the church knows that sin__ consequences are all such injustices and abuses. The church knows it is saving the world when it undertakes to speak also of such things.

God wants to save us in a people. He does not want to save us in isolation. And so today's church more than ever is accentuating the idea of being a people. The church therefore experiences conflicts, because it does not want a mass; it wants a people. A mass is a heap of persons, the drowsier the better, the more compliant the better. The church rejects communism's slander that it is the opium of the people. It has no intention of being the people's opium. Those that create drowsy masses are others. The church wants to rouse men and women to the true meaning of being a people. What is a people? A people is a community of persons where all cooperate for the common good.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth, for pointing out sin, for uprooting sin. No one wants to have a sore spot touched, and therefore a society with so many sores twitches when someone has the courage to touch it and say: __ou have to treat that. You have to get rid of that. Believe in Christ. Be converted.

Let us not forget: we are a pilgrim church, subject to misunderstanding, to persecution, but a church that walks serene, because it bears the force of love.

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 into sickles for work.

We must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs. Liberation that raises a cry against others is no true liberation. Liberation that means revolutions of hate and violence and takes away lives of others or abases the dignity of others cannot be true liberty. True liberty does violence to self and, like Christ, who disregarded that he was sovereign becomes a slave to serve others.

A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of Godthat does not get under anyone's skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in whichit is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?