The Oscar in heaven

BAGUIA

The Catholic Church’s canonization of the late Oscar Romero, martyred archbishop from El Salvador is an inspiration for the faithful to remain steadfast in bringing the gospel to various communities.

For Filipinos, the recognition of sainthood is timely. The arrival and imminence, respectively, of the campaign periods for the national and local election in May 2019 means plenty of noise will be generated by politicians and their supporters.

Likely to be buried by the hoopla is our continuing national sorrow that is the phenomenon of vigilantism. Men, women, and children are still being slain left and right. Our grief deepens because many have started to feel helpless about the killings, while others cheer them or have become numb to their grave wrongness.

After the recent killing and burning of a group of sugarcane farmers including four women and two children in Sagay City, Negros Occidental, the relevant Catholic leader, Bishop Gerardo Alminaza exhorted social action arms of the church to reach out to the survivors and the bereaved and minister to them with works of mercy.

“The tragic incident reveals the ugly face of the prevailing agrarian problem in Negros that remains unresolved,” the bishop said in a statement. “Our social action office in collaboration with our parish leaders in Vito, Sagay will reach out to victims and conduct fact-finding mission together with other human rights groups.”

Our own leader in the Cebu archdiocese, Archbishop Jose Palma has not been remiss in condemning the evil of killings in his own jurisdiction that has drawn the attention of the minority in the Senate who plan to probe them.

The mandatory prayer for an end to the series of killings in Cebu continues to be prayed in churches. This should be done without letup, following the modern dictum shortened as “push” that stands for “pray until something happens.”

Saint Oscar himself was steadfast in his principled, spiritual and peaceful resistance to the political violence that had engulfed his Latin American country. He had lived in a regime that had taken over power following a coup d’etat.

This regime had drawn into and later expelled a man named Roberto D’Aubuisson Arrieta who had said that for the sake of peace and order in El Salvador, 200,000 to 300,000 of his people needed to be killed.

Does that sound familiar, fellow Filipinos? Is there or are there people among us who in a mad thirst for order have come to conclude that it can be made to come about only by the elimination of neighbors, only by a national fratricide?

As Saint Oscar spoke to the military and their enemies who were killing one another and others in El Salvador, so he says to us today: “Peace is not the product of terror or fear. Peace is not the silence of cemeteries. Peace is not the silent result of violent repression. Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all to the good of all. Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity. It is right and it is duty.”

To the faithful, clergy, religious and lay men and women who continue to protest the killings in our country, Saint Oscar says: “Each one of you has to be God’s microphone. Each one of you has to be a messenger, a prophet.”

For his efforts to promote reconciliation and peace, Saint Oscar Romero, born on the Solemnity of the Virgin’s Assumption into Heaven was shot to death at Mass on the Eve of Solemnity of the Blessed Mother’s Annunciation.

The United Nations concluded through a truth and reconciliation commission in El Salvador that Arrieta ordered Saint Romero’s assassination.

In Saint Oscar Romero, the word of peace became flesh and was shed among us. May he intercede for the Philippines, so that the ongoing deluge of blood here may ring loud in heaven and draw God’s blessing, an end to the carnage. May he intercede for us who protest so that we may not get exhausted asking for our leaders to bring us peace through the ways of peace.