Dear Friends,
As we build the Beloved Community, we pray for you every day that you might continue to bring it about in your little corner of the world.
Today's Meditation honors the life and words of Oscar Romero. For most of his life,, he was a conservative, party-line leader. However, when he saw his people being disappeared and oppressed, he changed and became the voice of the poor, advocating for justice and peace.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION: Oscar Romero
St. Oscar Romero
St. Oscar Romero by Philip Bannister. Used with permission
March 24: “A church that suffers no persecution but enjoys the privileges and support of the things of the earth is not the true church of Jesus Christ,” said Óscar Romero, the Salvadoran archbishop who was martyred on this date in 1980. Romero was somewhat socially conservative until his friend, Rutilio Grande, SJ, was killed by government forces because his ministry to the poor was considered subversive. After that, Romero became an outspoken force for the poor and marginalized. He listed the names of people who were tortured, disappeared, and murdered by the government in his weekly radio sermons and consistently called for justice for the poor in his sermons and the diocesan newspaper. He was assassinated by the Salvadoran government while he was offering Mass, and thirty people were massacred by government forces at his funeral. Romero was canonized as a saint in 2018. Three years before he was killed, he wrote, “I have frequently been threatened with death. I must say that, as a Christian, I do not believe in death but in the resurrection. If they kill me, I shall rise again in the Salvadoran people.”.
"Aspire not to have more, but to be more." ~ Oscar Romero
"The ones who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless." ~ Oscar Romero
"We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest." ~ Oscar Romero
"A church that doesn't provoke any crises, a gospel that doesn't unsettle, a word of God that doesn't get under anyone’s skin, a word of God that doesn't touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed — what gospel is that?" ~ Oscar Romero
"I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me I will rise again in the people of El Salvador." ~ Oscar Romero
"Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world." ~ Oscar Romero
"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises." ~ Oscar Romero
"I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally." ~ Oscar Romero
"There are many things that can only be seen through eyes that have cried" ~ Oscar Romero
"We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own." ~ Oscar Romero
"Brothers, you came from our own people. You are killing your own brothers. Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'. No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God. No one has to obey an immoral law. It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders. The church cannot remain silent before such an abomination. ...In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: stop the repression." ~ Oscar Romero
"We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways." ~ Oscar Romero
"Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out; it is the only thing that can." ~ Oscar Romero
"You can tell the people that if they succeed in killing me, that I forgive and bless those who do it. Hopefully, they will realize they are wasting their time. A bishop will die, but the church of God, which is the people, will never perish." ~ Oscar Romero
"Peace is the product of justice and love." ~ Oscar Romero
"When we speak for the poor, please note that we do not take sides with one social class. What we do is invite all social classes, rich and poor, without distinction, saying to everyone let us take seriously the cause of the poor as though it were our own." ~ Oscar Romero
"Beautiful is the moment in which we understand that we are no more than an instrument of God; we live only as long as God wants us to live; we can only do as much as God makes us able to do; we are only as intelligent as God would have us be." ~ Oscar Romero
"There is no dichotomy between man and God's image. Whoever tortures a human being, whoever abuses a human being, whoever outrages a human being, abuses God's image." ~ Oscar Romero
"Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ." ~ Oscar Romero
"God is not satisfied with appearance. God wants the garment of justice. God wants his Christians dressed in love." ~ Oscar Romero
Upcoming Events
Women of the Passion
Friday March 31, 7:00 PM ET
In-person and On Zoom
You are invited to a unique Lenten experience of the passion of Jesus Christ as witnessed by the women in the company of Jesus. Following the traditional stations of the cross format, each station is narrated by a woman whose life was transformed by her encounter with Jesus, including the woman taken in adultery, the widow with the mite, the mother of James and John, and of course Mary Magdalene and the Mother of Jesus.
Sponsored by: The Spirit of Life: A Catholic Community of Justice & Joy, People of the Promise, and The Congregational Church of Weston UCC