24 March 2017 - Blessed Oscar Romero - Mark 12:28 - 34

      We have been highlighting different holy men and women in our Sunday liturgies on our Lenten journey here at St James.  Many older parishioners here at our parish have told me that even though they grew up in a devout Catholic family and attended Catholic schools, they really did not learn a lot about the saints growing up.  One only needs to go to the Amazon website to see how many thousands of books there are on the saints to recognize the renewed interest there is in the saints in the modern world.  Devotion to the saints was mocked and rejected in the Protestant Reformation, but now the Protestants are some of the ones most interested in the saints today; I can say that having grown up Protestant myself. Blessed Oscar Romero is the saint we honor today.  Being seen as a traditional, conservative priest, the aristocracy and military leaders of his native country of El Salvador applauded his appointment as Archbishop of San Salvador in the midst of that country’s civil war in the 1970s. They thought he would support those in power in the country and unite against the poor and the working classes struggling against oppression.  Yet, just three short years later, Oscar Romero would be martyred by members of that country’s military while celebrating the mass in a parish in his archdiocese.  He would be seen a voice of the voiceless, an advocate for social justice and the values of the Gospel, for standing up for the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed in the world.  Pope Francis declared that Romero was indeed a martyr for the faith, and not just involved in the messy politics of his country as many of his critics charged.  He is beloved by many in the world today, including Pope Francis, for his courage in proclaiming the Gospel and his selflessness in giving up his life for that Gospel.  When we hear the scribes and Pharisees trying to trap with trick questions, as we do in today’s Gospel, let us remember how we can in many ways be obstacles to the Gospel message taking root in our world. Not all of us are called to be martyrs in the way that Blessed Oscar Romero was.  But all of us are charged with being messengers of the Gospel message in the reality of our world.