One of the most important homilies Romero ever preached was the one on the day before his martyrdom. They are prophetic words that were probably the tipping point for those who sought to silence his voice. His words was greeted with a thunderous applause in the Sacred Heart Basilica where he was preaching.
They are words that all of us should take into account in a world best by calls for vengeance, for war, for violence against our enemies. They are no more than a concrete call to conscience which is based in the way of Christ who told us to love our enemies and in the example of the early Christians who proclaimed, “We must serve God rather than humans.”
Read, pray, and live these words of Monseñor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, martyr of the Americas:
“I want to make a call, in a special way, to the men of the army and in particular to the bases of the Guardia Nacional, the police in their barracks.
“Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God should prevail that says: ‘Do not kill!’ No solider is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin.
“The Church, the defender of the rights of God, of the law of God, of the dignity of the human person, cannot remain silent before so much abomination. We want the government seriously to consider that reforms mean nothing when they come bathed in so much blood. Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you in the name of God: ‘Stop the repression!’”
walk the way 