Читать книгу The Scandal of Redemption - Oscar Romero - Страница 8

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The Creator

HOW WONDERFUL IT IS, sisters and brothers, to feel governed by God, placed under God’s sovereignty! That is what the Holy Bible means when it says that there is no power that does not come from God and that authority must be obeyed because it comes from God (Rom. 13:1). But the Bible also says that the human sovereign, the one who commands, must not command anything apart from what God wants; moreover, it says that authority is to be respected only because it reflects God’s sacred power. When human authority contravenes God’s law and violates the rights, the freedom, and the dignity of human beings, then it is time to cry out as Saint Peter did in the Bible, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). All power comes from God, and therefore rulers cannot use their authority capriciously but only according to the Lord’s will. God’s providence aims to govern the nations, and the rulers are only his ministers, servants of God like all the rest of his creatures.

THE BIBLE SAYS that he is a just God (Wis. 12:13–18): “You do not judge unjustly.” “Your power is the source of justice.” Consider the richness of this concept of justice. Justice is the manifestation of power. A power is not true power unless it is just. God himself, who can do what he wills, does not abuse power; indeed, he cannot abuse it because he is just; he is justice par excellence. God’s power is illuminated by his infinite justice. “You judge with moderation.” This is the eternal serenity of God; he does not get impatient. He is the God who holds the reins of all peoples and all human beings, and that is why his justice is restrained; it is justice that is serene and holy.

Still another title that comes from today’s readings is “merciful God.” “Your universal sovereignty makes you spare all.” “You govern us with great indulgence because you can do whatever you want.”… Dear sisters and brothers, this is our God. Let us not forget him; let us respect him, realizing that he is the source of all the joy and the confidence of our faith. May the God that Jesus Christ reveals to us as Father, as providence, as goodness, always capture our hearts so that we will serve him not out of fear but out of love.

ONLY WHEN WE SEE the God of our Lord Jesus Christ illuminating our dawns, our seas, and our volcanoes will we understand that God has created a world out of love to give it to his children, with whom he wants to enter into the communion of family. In this way we understand how the earth groans beneath the weight of sin (Rom. 8:22) because humanity has not understood that the whole of creation exists for the happiness of all human beings and not for us to be comfortably settled here on earth.

THERE IS NO ANONYMOUS PERSON among those of us who are here. All of you have your own individual histories, even the humblest of persons, even the smallest child who has come to this Mass, even the poorest and sickest folks listening by radio, all those people about whom nobody will talk in the history books. God has loved each of you singularly, as an unrepeatable phenomenon. God has not made human beings in a mold…. It was not my parents who gave me being; they were simply instruments or means that God used to give me life…. Even prior to the months of my gestation, I existed in the mind of God as a project which, if brought to fulfillment, would make of me a saint because a saint is nothing else than the full realization of a life according to the design of God.

THE WHOLE HISTORY OF ISRAEL is the story of humanity’s return to God after breaking away. The whole marvelous book of Exodus tells how the people left slavery in Egypt and journeyed toward the Promised Land; it is a symbol of pilgrimage, of return, of the search for reconciliation…. The people had no certainty about the future; they lived believing in the land God had promised them, though they didn’t know where it was. They seemed crazy but they weren’t crazy; they were people of faith: “God has promised it! He will make it happen!” …

There is a wonderful relationship here with our own situation in El Salvador, where the land is being fought over. Let us not forget that the land is closely tied to the blessings and promises of God….. Not having land is a consequence of sin. When Adam left paradise, he was a man without land as the result of sin. Now Israel, pardoned by God, has returned to the land and can eat of the fruits and the grains of the earth. God gives his blessings in the form of land. The land contains much of God, and therefore it groans when the unjust monopolize it and leave no space for others. Agrarian reform is a theological necessity. A country’s land cannot remain in the hands of just a few; it must be given to all so that all can share in the blessings God gives through the land…. There will be no true reconciliation between our people and God as long as there is no just distribution, as long as the goods of our Salvadoran land do not bring benefits and happiness to all Salvadorans.

LET US LOOK THIS MORNING, sisters and brothers, on this church which extends far beyond the tiny geographical speck which is El Salvador. We feel that we are sisters and brothers with all the peoples of Central America, of this continent of North America, of Canada, of Europe. And we are all called to follow this light.

What is marvelous to consider is that in this convocation of peoples God – the God of nations – respects the freedom, the customs, and the unique way of being of each people. The reading from Isaiah tells us, “The riches of the sea shall be emptied before you, and the wealth of nations shall be brought to you” (Isa. 60:5). This kingdom of God certainly has no need of our material goods, but we recognize that God is the origin of our coffee crops, our sugar cane, our cotton fields, all our wealth, and all the wealth of the world, and he has a right to all of these things. So we generously offer these things to God, recognizing that he owns them all, just as the magi placed gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the Christ Child’s crib. Everything that the world produces is God’s. The true wealth of the church as God’s kingdom is the realization that all the differences among the world’s peoples come from God. God has created in this world a kingdom rich like no other because all the marvels of the earth are his. Everything produced by human cultures belongs to God. It is God who promotes and guides all the wealth and progress of the peoples.

Under the sign of bread and wine the priests of all latitudes of the world tell the Lord that we are offering him, in this bread and in this wine, the work of human hands. When we say “the work of human hands,” we understand this to be the work of all the latitudes of the world. We offer it all to God because without God human labors and human progress have no meaning. We all contribute to this kingdom of God.

DIARY, MONDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1978

In the afternoon I went to celebrate Mass in the village of La Loma in the territory of San Pedro Perulapán, a Mass offered for two murdered peasants who were found near the Apulo Highway. I was surprised by the size of the crowd waiting for me. I addressed words of comfort to them. The mothers, wives, children, and other family members and friends of those murdered were present there.

All of them reflected the fear being sowed in these sectors of our dear people—fear that is justified by the repression and abuse of authority by the security forces and, especially, by the armed peasant groups like the organization ORDEN. In fact, while we celebrated Mass, they appeared with their curved knives, some of them unsheathed, and they stood where they could watch the crowd. They wrote down the license number of the van in which we had come with the sisters. And there was an aggressive attitude, or, at least, a mistrustful wariness. I understood the peasants’ fears, why many men sleep somewhere other than at their homes for fear of being taken by surprise at night.