"THE VIOLENCE OF LOVE", Oscar Romero

"The violence we preach is not
the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work."

OSCAR ROMERO, NOVEMBER 27, 1977


This is the mission entrusted to the church,
a hard mission:
to uproot sins from history,
to uproot sins from the economy,
to uproot sins wherever they are.
What a hard task!
It has to meet conflicts amid so much selfishness,
so much pride,
so much vanity,
so many who have enthroned the reign of sin among us.

The church must suffer for speaking the truth,
for pointing out sin,
for uprooting sin.
No one wants to have a sore spot touched,
and therefore a society with so many sores twitches
when someone has the courage to touch it
and say: "You have to treat that.
You have to get rid of that.
Believe in Christ.
Be converted.

JANUARY 15, 1978

(and one more that Bush, Cheney, and their puppeteer followers should understand)

A society's or political community's reason for being
is not the security of the state
but the human person.
Christ said, "Man is not for the sabbath;
the sabbath is for man."
He puts human beings as the objective
of all laws and all institutions.
Humans are not for the state;
the state is for them.

JANUARY 15, 1978