At the culmination
of the week of prayers for Christian unity, Pope Francis said,
“In this moment of prayer for unity, I
would also like to remember our martyrs.” Francis recalled that Christians
from various denominations are killed by persecutors who do not ask which
church they belong to. “This, brothers and sisters, is the ecumenism
of blood.”
In the year
2000, the Jubilee Year Ecumenical Commission pointed out that Archbishop Óscar A. Romero of El Salvador has been “recognized beyond confessional boundaries”
as being among the “martyrs and exemplary
confessors of faith, hope and charity,” who could help promote Christian
unity. Romero, whose martyrdom was
recognized by a panel of Vatican theologians earlier this month, had already
been added to the Anglican liturgical calendar and is one of the 20th century martyrs
depicted in the statuary of Westminster Abbey.
At the end of
last year, Lord Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury and leader of the
worldwide Anglican Communion delivered an address entitled “A saint for the whole people of God: Óscar Romero
and the ecumenical future.” In his
address, Lord Williams called Romero “one
of the great gifts of God to the whole people of God in the last few decades;
one whose witness and teaching is a legacy for Christians everywhere.” He posited that Romero contributed to
Christian unity not only through his martyrdom, but also through his commitment
to the poor. Here is an excerpt.
Where
is God? God is with the most vulnerable. That ought to be an axiom for every
Christian reading her or his Bible. And that, of course, means that the unity
of the Church, if it’s true unity with Jesus Christ, is bound up with the
Church being where Christ is. For Romero, the unity of the Church is bound up
with being united with Christ through solidarity with the poor. The calling of
the believer is to be where Christ is, and like Christ to give voice to the cry
of the suffering and dispossessed. Speaking with and for Christ, speaking from
the place of Christ, is speaking from the place of the dispossessed and the
marginal ...
[Romero]
poses a deeply troubling and challenging question about ecumenism: can we see
our vision of unity afresh in the context of being united with Christ as he
understands it? Do we seek not just the
unity of the churches, some kind of fusion of various kinds of institutional
life, or unity with Christ? The
ecumenical vision feels and sounds remarkably different if we begin by saying
that what we pray for and hope for is to be united with Jesus Christ. And through that, and in that, to be united
with one another. And to be united with
Christ in Christ's proclamation of good news for the poor ...
None of this is meant to suggest that we simply dismantle all our interests and concerns in doctrine, and sacrament, and discipline, and simply go and look for good causes to support together. For, you see, none of this would make any sense whatsoever, unless our doctrinal and sacramental commitments were what they are. The Christ who is there with and in the poor is not just an impressive human teacher, but the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Almighty, clothing himself in our poverty, so that we may be clothed with his divine richness. Unless we believe that, none of this business about being united with him in the poor would make any sense whatever ...
So, the ecumenical future in the light of Archbishop Romero’s life and death, his prayer and witness, becomes a future in which all of our Christian communities engage more deeply together in challenging the various ideologies that their own church life, and their own social life, will throw up. It becomes a future in which we seek to help one another further towards unity with Jesus Christ in the prayerful confidence that it is in that moment that we begin the journey towards one another. Archbishop Romero believed very deeply, as we have seen, that there is only one Church; a Church of those who are truly where Christ is, who truly speak with his voice into and out of that situation. And when we’re inclined to be anxious or cynical, despairing even, about whether the churches can ever be one, it does help not a little to remember that Christ is already and eternally one, that his body is one, that his good news is one, and that we are stumblingly making our way towards that which is already real in him.
None of this is meant to suggest that we simply dismantle all our interests and concerns in doctrine, and sacrament, and discipline, and simply go and look for good causes to support together. For, you see, none of this would make any sense whatsoever, unless our doctrinal and sacramental commitments were what they are. The Christ who is there with and in the poor is not just an impressive human teacher, but the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Almighty, clothing himself in our poverty, so that we may be clothed with his divine richness. Unless we believe that, none of this business about being united with him in the poor would make any sense whatever ...
So, the ecumenical future in the light of Archbishop Romero’s life and death, his prayer and witness, becomes a future in which all of our Christian communities engage more deeply together in challenging the various ideologies that their own church life, and their own social life, will throw up. It becomes a future in which we seek to help one another further towards unity with Jesus Christ in the prayerful confidence that it is in that moment that we begin the journey towards one another. Archbishop Romero believed very deeply, as we have seen, that there is only one Church; a Church of those who are truly where Christ is, who truly speak with his voice into and out of that situation. And when we’re inclined to be anxious or cynical, despairing even, about whether the churches can ever be one, it does help not a little to remember that Christ is already and eternally one, that his body is one, that his good news is one, and that we are stumblingly making our way towards that which is already real in him.
Read the full
text at the Archbishop Romero Trust web site.
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