[Announce] Fw: Romero's incarnation

[Robert Waldrop]

The article below is by the moderator of the 
sanromero at gruposyahoo.com discussion group.

Bob Waldrop, Romero House, Oklahoma City

----- Original Message ----- 
To: sanromero at gruposyahoo.com
Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 6:51 PM
Subject: [sanromero] Romero's incarnation

NOVANTA ANNI: Archbishop Romero at 90

Thirty years ago this week, on his sixtieth 
birthday, which was
marked on August 15, 1977, Msgr. Oscar Arnulfo 
Romero moved out of
the San Salvador archbishop's palace and took up 
residence in a
small "casita" (shack) across the street from the 
chapel of the
Divine Providence cancer hospital, on the grounds 
of the hospital run
by Carmelite nuns in western San Salvador. By 
then, Romero had been
Archbishop of San Salvador for half a year, and 
his moving out of the
diocesan house for a simple room on a cancer 
campus symbolizes the
commitment Romero was making, shunning the glory 
of the world to do
the work of God, among the hopeless and suffering. 
One can project
several meanings on the episode, based on what 
theological or
ideological, biographic or even hagiographic bent 
one wants to give
the event. It can be taken to symbolize Romero 
distancing himself
from the institutional church, from its implements 
of prestige and
power. It can be also taken to represent just the 
opposite: Romero
aligning himself more intimately with the 
traditions of the hermits,
and saints of charity, taking vows of poverty and 
mortification.

The month before he was assassinated, Archbishop 
Romero gave a sermon
which drew upon the liturgical texts of Jeremiah 
and Luke's account
of the Sermon on the Mount, as well as the Latin 
American Bishop's
document from Medellín, Colombia in 1968, and 
Romero's meditation On
the Political Dimension of the Faith, written with 
Fr. Jon Sobrino,
El Salvador's most brilliant -- and, most 
controversial -- 
theologian. In short, Romero's sermon drew on the 
most magnificent
set of texts that could be amassed for the message 
he was
preaching, "The Poverty of the Beatitudes, the 
True Force for the
Liberation of the People." In that sermon, Romero 
gives us a glimpse
of the philosophy that motivated all his action as 
archbishop,
beginning with the decision he made to move out of 
the archbishop's
palace in August 1977. Romero preached: "This is 
the commitment of
being a Christian: to follow Christ in His 
incarnation. If Christ is
God majestic who becomes a man humbled to the 
point of the death of
slaves on a cross and lives with the poor, so must 
be our Christian
faith. That Christian who does not want to live 
this commitment of
solidarity with the poor is not worthy of being 
called a Christian."
Romero also explained the urgent need to align 
ourselves with the
poor: "In the first place, we become incarnate in 
the poor, we want
a Church that truly stands elbow to elbow with the 
poor People of El
Salvador and so thus we recognize that in our 
approach to the poor we
unveil the true face of the Suffering Servant of 
Yahweh. It is there
that we can know more closely the mystery of the 
Christ who becomes a
man, and who becomes poor for us." (Feb. 17, 1980 
sermon.) Romero
also recognizes that poverty is itself a 
denunciation, a red flag
that cries to heaven that the world is disordered 
and governed by
greed and sin; and that poverty is a 
spirituality -- an attitude of
sacrifice and of rejection of the material world 
and its inequities
in favor of the perfect and Transcendent wealth of 
the Kingdom, which
is perfect and filled with Love.

Commenting on celebrations of his birthday in 
1977, Romero said that
the celebrations helped him understand, "once 
again that my life does
not belong to me, but to all of you." (Aug. 21, 
1977 sermon.)
Thirty years later, it is more true than it was in 
1977: Romero's
birthday is our time to reflect, as Bishop Romero 
did during his own
lifetime, on what it means to be born and what it 
means to become
incarnate. Our birth is through God's will that 
puts us here. But
it is up to us to "become incarnate in the poor" 
in order to "follow
Christ in His incarnation." On Romero's 90th 
birthday, it is fitting
to recall not just his birth, but also his 
incarnation.

Fraternalmente,

Carlos