Fr Matthew Reese

“Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”
—John 12:25-26

Dear Friends in Christ,

The ordinary days of Lent are something called “Greater Ferias.” That is to say, they have their own appointed readings and they generally outrank every saint’s day and commemoration except for the most important (like the Feast of the Annunciation which we will celebrate tomorrow).

At the noonday mass today, we will not keep the feast of Oscar Romero for this reason.

But he surely bears mention. 

Oscar Romero was Archbishop of San Salvador in a time of extraordinary political upheaval and violence. Just a few years into his episcopate, El Salvador erupted into a Civil War—one that in many ways was a proxy conflict between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba.

Romero, a relative conservative, was in a particularly difficult position. He was at once a staunch defender of the Church and thus at odds with revolutionary Marxists (even among his own clergy), but also a prophetic voice for the liberation of the poor, and thus a threat to right-wing militias entering the fray.

Romero became an enormously popular preacher and presenter, his voice a fixture of radio broadcasts and public addresses, his sermons continually calling for the conversion of the rich and those in power, and the uplifting of the downtrodden and the voiceless.

On this day in 1980, as he had just finished preaching and had stepped behind the altar in a small Catholic hospital chapel, a gunman entered from the west doors and opened fire, shooting Bishop Romero in the heart. When he was buried six days later, a bomb exploded in the crowd of mourners and shots rang out. Several dozen people died.

He was not the last of the Christian faithful to be massacred for their witness to the poor and the helpless. El Salvador’s civil war lasted another twelve years.

Romero’s example—and that of countless other Salvadorans—reminds us how precious peace is, and how dangerous the cause of righteousness can sometimes be. But the Gospel appointed for his mass from John, Chapter 12, also reminds us that our hope lies not in this world but in the world to come. “Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”

Let us pray with that this Lent. And let us humbly ask, Oscar, pray for us.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew