The whole person must be saved: body and soul, individual and society.
God’s reign must be established now on earth. That reign of God finds itself hindered, manacled, by many idolatrous misuses of money and power.
Those false gods must be overthrown, just as the first evangelizers in the Americas overthrew the false gods that our natives adored.
Today the idols are different. They are called money, they are called political interests, they are called national security.
As idolatries, they are trying to displace God from his altar.
The church declares that people can be happy only when, like the magi, they adore the one true God.
January 7, 1979.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez was Archbishop of San Salvador, El Salvador (1977-1980). He was murdered because he spoke out against poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture while he was celebrating the Eucharist in a Catholic hospital on March 24, 1980. He was proclaimed a saint by Pope Francis in Rome on October 14, 2018.
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Comments
One response to “OSCAR ROMERO. Advent Readings from a Modern Martyr”
We could benefit from a few Oscar Romero’s and Dom Helder Camara’s at this juncture in history. I feel these types of heroic people are developing in a different milieu now than in the past. In addition, younger activists who have no formal connections to the institutional church are leading the way. The Christ is being reborn again in the hearts and minds of all those who yearn for social and environmental justice.