Monseñor, vives hoy

This video by Fabrizio Villegas includes powerful moments and images from Monseñor Oscar Romero's life.  I especially love that it begins with one of my favorite nuns here, tiny Sr. Benedita, touring us through Monseñor's house on the grounds of the Hospitalito (Hospital Divina Providencia, where he lived and died).  Then, about 4:07 minutes in, close to the end, there's video of Monseñor's visit to one of the many slums built along abandoned railroad tracks (because that was and is public ground, unused, and an easy place to take possession and build a shack of cardboard and tin) - perhaps the railroad tracks near the church Maria, Madre de los Pobres in the La Chacra neighborhood of San Salvador.  I'm moved by the three unidentified Sisters who accompany Monseñor, clearly Sisters who work in this slum and are showing him around.  It reminds me that communities of women religious have long been present with the poorest among us.

We celebrated Monseñor Romero's life and martyrdom today, on the eve of the day he died (since tomorrow is Palm Sunday).  I missed the main celebration - apparently the Archbishop was here in Suchitoto and it was a grand celebration, but I was on an errand of mercy in the capital, and was too late to join in - but the evening Mass was also dedicated to Monseñor on the 33rd anniversary of his death.  After communion the choir sang one of my favorite canciones (words and music by Alvar Castillo) - the chorus is:

Monseñor vives hoy
en el corazon
del pueblo que tanto te amó.
Monseñor tu verdad
nos hace marchar
a la victoria final.

Monseñor you live today
in the heart
of the people who loved you so much.
Monseñor your truth
makes us march
toward the final victory.

And at the end of the mass we all proclaimed together "Que vive Monseñor Romero!  Que vive!"  With the election of Pope Francis, with his passion for the poor, Salvadorans have hope that the canonization of Monseñor Romero will take place at last - but then the people have always known that he is San Romero de las Americas, pastor, prophet and martyr for the people he loved so much.

Meetings and memories

Saturday's procession and Mass commemorating Monseñor Romero was a beautiful event, even though Patti and I only saw the start of it (we knew that walking some miles to El Rosario, the Dominican church, at the slow pace of the procession wouldn't have been a good idea for either one of us, alas).  We did meet a lot of friends at the Plaza of the Americas, where the procession began, among them Sister Peggy, Leslie Schuld, Patty Clausen, and Hernan Merino.  It was wonderful to be part of this large, reverent, and joyful crowd remembering Monseñor. 

Then today I had the honor of meeting Doña Tulia of San Antonio Los Ranchos and her son Toño, two people who lived some of the worst of the horrors of the Civil War.  Doña Tulia, now a beautiful woman in her 80s, lost 9 of her ll children.  Toño, the youngest, told me about his memories of Karla Petitte (very likely I'm not spelling her name correctly), a beloved Maryknoll Sister who drowned when her jeep was caught in a flash flood.  She was with Sr. Ita Ford, who somehow survived the flood only to be murdered in December, 1980.  Hearing this eyewitness of El Salvador's tormented history brought home so powerfully the pain and loss of the years of repression and war.  These are the people Monseñor Romero loved and spoke for and died for.  And now he does live again in the Salvadoran people.

Photos below: Hernan Merino in this year's Romero T-shirt; Patti Moore with monks in the background; part of the crowd.

San Romero of the Americas

Tomorrow in San Salvador Patti Moore and I will join those remembering Oscar Arnulfo Romero Galdamez, San Romero of the Americas, a man who turned toward the beloved people of El Salvador in their struggle for peace and justice, and who did not turn away in the face of all the threats that became reality on March 24, 1980.  Thirty-two years later, my Salvadoran friends still remember listening to his voice on the radio, how everyone tuned in to listen to the Sunday homilies in which he told the truth about the events of the unfolding civil war.

In his last Sunday homily on March 23, 1980, he had spoken to the soldiers: "In the name of God, then, and in the name of this suffering people, whose cries rise to heaven more tumultuously every day, I beg you, I pray you, I order you in the name of God: cease the repression!"

The next day he presided at a family memorial Mass in the small chapel at the Hospitalito Divina Providencia, where he lived in the simple house the Sisters had built for him.  The gospel for his homily was John 12: 23-26: Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. (John 12:24).  As he came to the end of his homily - when he must have seen the assassin's car driving up to the open door of the chapel, the rifle being aimed - he said: "May this body immolated and this flesh sacrificed for us nourish us also to give our body and our blood to suffering and to pain, like Christ: not for itself, but to give the idea of justice and of peace to our people."  As he turned to begin the Eucharistic prayer, a single shot was fired from the door.

Monseñor, your people of El Salvador will always remember you. 

An El Salvador light on the scriptures

Yesterday I was invited by my Seattle parish, St. Patrick's, to reflect on the readings for the 2nd Sunday in Lent in light of my experience in El Salvador.  The readings were the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22, 1-18); the passage from Romans that asks "if God is for us, who can be against us"; and the Transfiguration (Mark 9, 2-10).  Here's what I said:

God put Abraham to the test.  How can we bear to hear this passage from Genesis, this terrible story of child sacrifice required by God?  We can look at it from a distance and say that yes, it’s a story about leaving behind an ancient and horrible tradition of sacrificing the first born son, leaving behind the image of a God who would require that sacrifice.  But we’re still faced with the unimaginable horror of that moment when Abraham turns to bind his son and lay him on the altar in his obedience to a bloodthirsty God.

But at that awful moment on the mountaintop there’s a pause, then a shift,  the light changes and the angel says NO, no, put down that sword, here is your beloved son, here is your future.  Who could bear such a moment? 

We are all put to the test in our lives, facing questions of who we are and who we’re called to be, facing into grief and loss, or finding ourselves in a moment when what’s asked of us – going with someone we love through a terrible crisis or caring for someone we love who is dying – seems far beyond our power to give.  This happens often enough to those of us who live in the rich world of North America, but how much more often are our brothers and sisters in the poor world, in countries like Haiti, Somalia, El Salvador faced with tests that you would think no one could pass

Many of you know that I have been living in El Salvador for three years now, coordinating PeaceHealth’s medical mission program and getting to know the people and the tragic history of this small Central American country.  El Salvador means “the savior,” of course, “el Salvador del mundo,” the Savior of the World.  And the feast of the Savior of the World is the feast of the Transfiguration, an event celebrated with a week of vacations and celebrations and processions every August.  …So as I reflected on today’s readings I began to ask myself what my Salvadoran friends and neighbors will be making of them.

They won’t, I think, find the sacrifice of Isaac as strange, as horrifying, as archaic as we do.  It’s going to remind them too clearly of the realities of their history and of their lives – and of the way their lives are part of God’s story.  It will remind my friend Lita of watching from a refugee camp in Honduras as villagers fleeing Chalatenango were mowed down by Salvadoran and Honduran troops.  It will remind Doña Licha of the nights she spent huddled hungry and terrified with her children in what’s now our pleasant little tourist town, Suchitoto, listening to rockets and bombs and gunfire.  It will remind Doña Mercedes of the day she found the headless body of her son in a Suchitoto park. It will remind Doña Tulia of San Antonio Los Ranchos that she lost nine of her eleven children during the Civil War. 

Rogelio will remember, as he does every day of his life, that he witnessed the massacre of his family and his village, Copapayo, escaping only because he – a 10-year-old boy - fell back among high grasses and played dead. 

it will remind them all of the story of their beloved pastor, prophet and martyr, Monseñor Oscar Romero, who knew he was marked for death in 1980 and asked only that his blood become a seed of liberty for his people.

The sacrifice of Isaac might also remind my Salvadoran friends of the terrible choices and realities they often face in the present moment: to know that your child’s life could be saved with a new heart valve that you cannot possibly afford; to love and raise children who may well grow up and join a gang; to pay protection money to the gang so you can keep your little store open; to save money so you can send a family member north for the hope of remittances. 

But in their terrible experiences – in the past of the civil war, in the present of poverty and violence and limitation – they know God who stands with them, God who is for them.  “If God is for us, who can be against us?” asks Paul.  This is not the God who demands sacrifice, but the God who loves and saves – the God of the Transfiguration, who saves Isaac, who loves and reveals Jesus, who leads us up the mountaintop to the place where truth can be known. 

The God revealed to us all in the Transfiguration is not a God who saves us by keeping us from suffering.  Just before this passage in Mark’s Gospel Jesus says, “whoever wishes to save her life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” And coming down the mountain, he reminds them that the story leads to resurrection – but only through death.  Still the disciples are allowed to see what my Salvadoran friends know in their hearts and souls: here is the Beloved.  Through Jesus we are all the Beloved.

I find it hopeful that Peter, the Rock on whom our church is built, is such a bumbler.  He’s been taken up to the mountaintop with James and John and he sees the reality revealed, the dazzling white clothes, the conversation with Moses and Elijah (and what would be the sound of that conversation – birdsong, falling water, fire?) and he’s terrified – they are all terrified – at this fearful reality.  Peter, it seems, can’t just fall on the ground in silence before this Jesus, he has to do something – let’s keep this going, let’s make some tents, let’s have a party, he says. 

But then they are overshadowed, Peter and all, by the truth within the truth: “This is my beloved son.  Listen to him.”  And suddenly there’s nothing to be seen anymore but Jesus alone with them, the truth within the truth on the mountaintop. 

I believe that’s the Jesús my Salvadoran friends know, the beloved one, the one who loves them even though AND BECAUSE they’re bumblers too, as are we all, who loves them even though AND BECAUSE their lives are lived at the margins of the world’s great events, who loves them even though AND BECAUSE, like the disciples, they don’t understand theology and don’t know how to make a liturgically correct response to the Transfiguration.

Instead, like Peter, they make a party, a fiesta.  No one makes fiesta like my neighbors in El Salvador, with costumes and firecrackers and processions and speeches and dances and food and drink.  They celebrate being alive, even though it’s hard, this life.  They celebrate the truth within the truth, that they are seen and known and loved, just as they are.

My friend Lita – the woman who witnessed the massacre at the Rio Sumpul - comes to visit Margaret Jane and me most Thursdays.  Lita got to know our Sisters Andrea and Margaret Jane when she lived in the Calle Real refugee camp during the civil war and they were providing some safety by being an international presence.  Now she’s a health promoter, a pillar of life in her El Bario community, a woman who, given half a chance, could manage the world.  When she comes to call we have lemonade and cookies and talk about her disabled granddaughter, about the trouble she’s been having for months with a sinus infection, about the hard work. 

La vida no es facil, she says, life isn’t easy, la vida no es facil.  And then she laughs and lets down her beautiful long hair, black streaked with white, and she gives us a great hug and maybe some mangoes or tamales and says “Primero Dios nos vemos el otro jueves” – God first, we’ll see each other next Thursday.  Primero Dios, God first: that’s what Lita and my Salvadoran neighbors get right, what we gringos often get wrong.  We want to think it depends on us whether we’ll meet on Thursday.  Lita knows that our meeting, everything, depends on God.  And then we laugh together because we know that la vida no es facil, but it is transfigured by love and laughter, by the truth within the truth and, primero Dios, we will meet.

Barack Obama in El Salvador

I'm sad not to be in El Salvador today while President Barack Obama visits - not that I'd have been asked to the state dinner, but the television channels will have been full of images of every moment. The moment that will mean the most to many Salvadorans is captured here: Obama paying his respects at the tomb of Monseñor Oscar Romero in the crypt of the Cathedral in San Salvador. La Prensa Grafica, source for this photo, noted that a few days ago Obama had said that Romero is a point of social reference not just for El Salvador, but for all the world.

I'm sad not to be there today, but I'm proud and happy to be a U.S. citizen who lives and works in El Salvador on this day.

Feliz Año

Happy Year! That's what everyone here is saying to each other. Sometimes "Nuevo" gets added, but mostly it doesn't. Here in Suchitoto we began 2011 with plenty of noise - from the mountain of firecrackers that were lit with a bang in the streets to the dance music pulsating from the disco next door - and everyone proceeded to enjoy the lovely long weekend. I've been enjoying getting to know Susan Masters, Korla's mother and a Lutheran pastor called to a deaf community in Minnesota. Susan goes home tomorrow, and we will settle back into the ordinary times of January for a while.

I looked for an image that might speak of my hopes for 2011, and found this photo of the altar mural in the church at El Paisnal, the church where Padre Rutilio Grande was buried after his assassination in 1977. He was the first of many Salvadoran priests, religious and catechists who were killed during the civil war, and his death turned Monseñor Romero into a prophet for justic. In this mural, Rutilio stands to the right and Monseñor Romero to the left, blessing a table filled with the good things of the Salvadoran earth - fruits and vegetables, tamales, tortillas, a jug with something good to drink - and around them stand the people they loved. The legend - taken from one of Rutilio Grande's sermons - says "una mesa comun para todos" - a shared table for everyone. May we come closer in 2011 to sharing the goods of the earth with everyone, with justice, and may we treat tenderly the earth that blesses us with such bounty.

Friends and memories

We went visiting today, heading first for Mass in the Crypt of the Cathedral, where the Monseñor Oscar Romero community gathers each Sunday by Monseñor's tomb. When we got there, we found the Cathedral closed, and learned that it had been occupied by a group demanding support for wounded ex-combatants from the civil war. The Mass was held instead in El Rosario, the dramatic modern Dominican church a block away.

There we met by arrangement with Estela Garcia and Susy Solis Garcia: Estela worked with Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace Eleanor Gilmore and Margaret Byrne when both were with the Jesuit Refugee Service in El Despertar, near Estela's home on the slopes of the Volcan San Salvador. Margaret knew Susy, Estela's daughter, when she was a little girl of six, and has helped to put her through University. It was a most happy reunion - that's Susy and Estela between me and Margaret - and then we all crammed in the car (Susy in the rear hatchback) to drive to El Paraiso in Chalatenango for another reunion, with Rosita, who was a patient in El Despertar when Margaret worked there. We took a huge bucket of Pollo Campero with us and shared the feast with Rosita and her daughters Lupita and Edith. And all the way back to San Salvador we talked and talked and laughed and remembered. A wonderful day, topped off by dinner at Beto's, San Salvador's famous fish restaurant. By the time we got back to Suchitoto we were all talked out and ready for an early night. ¡Muy buenas noches!

El Salvador del Mundo

Today, the feast of the Transfiguration, is for the capital city of San Salvador - and for the country as a whole - the country's patronal feast of El Salvador del Mundo, the savior of the world. This photo is from the parade in downtown San Salvador a couple of years ago, borrowed from the internet as nothing would lure me to the capital on this day of crowded and jubilant fiesta.

Almost everyone had yesterday and today off: school is out and for many, the whole week has been free for enjoying "the August festivals." Here, as during Holy Week and Christmas Week, the religious and secular holidays bump shoulders, with processions and firecrackers and dances and parades and trips to the beach all blending together in a happy stew - ¡Fiesta! ¡Que disfruten! Have a great time, everyone!

But the more solemn reality of this feast was beautifully stated by Monseñor Romero on the 6th of August, 1977: "I tell you, beloved Catholics, that all of us, the Church, are the Transfiguration of Christ: a people illuminated by faith, encouraged by a great hope, held together by a great love. We are in truth the glory of the Lord, most when we are conscious that this glorious name of our country is a gift of favor of the Lord."