The grain of wheat: the martyrdom of St Oscar Romero

About Romero –
The Archbishop Romero Trust

Central America has been a particularly troubled part of the globe over the decades; it has been the crossroads of competing political ideologies and economic interests. The Roman Catholic Church continues to play an important role, there as well as elsewhere, in speaking out for the poor and the  marginalised.  On 24 March,1980, Archbishop Oscar Romero was shot dead while celebrating Mass in the chapel of Divine Providence Hospital in El Salvador.

He died at the altar while offering the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, uniting his life to the sacrifice of Christ.  His crime was that he had spoken out courageously and continually against injustice and State terror. He had called on members of the security forces not to obey immoral orders to kill. 

A holy priest who had earned a reputation as a somewhat quiet and conservative man dedicated to piety moved into a troubled place when he had been appointed archbishop of El Salvador in 1977. As the Vaticannews site says:

Every day, people disappeared; peasants were terrorized; priests and church workers who attempted to aid the poor were tortured or killed.

He denounced the right-wing regime that served the military and wealthy oligarchy that murdered people as well as the left-wing guerrillas that pursued the path of violence. He also denounced the Government of the United States that armed the regime. He said:

A Christian’s authenticity is shown in difficult hours…. Blessed be God for this difficult hour in our archdiocese. Let us be worthy of it!

The day before he was assassinated, he appealed directly to the Government soldiers as follows:

No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God…. It is time now for you to recover your conscience…. Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more loudly each day, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: stop the repression!

At the Mass celebrated the following day he preached a homily based on a specially chosen set of readings for a deceased person called Sara Meardi de Pinto.  The Gospel used on the occasion was from John 12:23–26 .  In that reading Jesus tells us:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

In his final homily, St Oscar Romero said the following after which the assassin murdered him from the back of the chapel:

This holy Mass of thanksgiving, then, is just such an act of faith. By Christian faith we know that at this moment the host of wheat becomes the body of the Lord who offered himself for the redemption of the world, and that the wine in this chalice is transformed into the blood that was the price of salvation. May this body that was immolated and this flesh that was sacrificed for humankind also nourish us so that we can give our bodies and our blood to suffering and pain, as Christ did, not for our own sake but to bring justice and peace to our people. Let us therefore join closely together in faith and hope at this moment of prayer for Doña Sarita and ourselves. [source]

 

When he said ‘….por doña Sarita y por nosotros.’ (for Doña Sarita and ourselves) a very loud bang sounded.

His offering was complete.  He once said:

Some want to keep a gospel so disembodied that it doesn’t get involved at all in the world it must save. Christ is now in history. Christ is in the womb of the people. Christ is now bringing about the new heavens and the new earth. (December3, 1978)

St Oscar Romero was canonised in 2018 and is regarded by many as the unofficial patron saint of the Americas and El Salvador as well as those who work for justice and peace. Saint Oscar Romero was a voice for the voiceless and his continuing prayer for his beloved land and, indeed, the whole continent of South and North America is very much needed at this time.

Saint Oscar Romero, martyr, voice of the poor and faithful witness of gospel, pray for us.

Postscript

I found the following entry on the Britannica website

During his funeral a bomb or bombs went off outside the Metropolitan Cathedral of San Salvador, where tens of thousands of mourners were gathered at what has been considered one of the largest demonstrations in the country’s history. Gunfire then rained down on the panic-stricken crowd, leaving an estimated 27 to 40 people dead and more than 200 wounded from the violence and subsequent stampede