Andrew Sullivan has posted a striking quotation today (via the blog Reasons and Opinions) from the martyred archbishop Óscar Romero:
There is no dichotomy between man and God's image.
Whoever tortures a human being,
whoever abuses a human being,
whoever outrages a human being,
abuses God's image.
Please follow me over the jump to learn why Romero's words are so important on this Valentine's Day.
This is a day supposedly dedicated to the celebration of love. But in a nation whose "government by the people" is now dedicated to the proposition that some can be tortured and abused in our name, Romero’s words remind us that love is not only sweet and charming and sensual: it can be the most terrible of rebukes against those who cause suffering--and the most powerful of weapons for those who would change the world.
Óscar Arnulfo Romero y Galdámez (1917-1980) was the Archbishop of San Salvador whose fearless advocacy for the poor and the oppressed eventually caused him to be assassinated--most likely by a government-sanctioned death squad--as he was celebrating Mass. His life and death are a witness to the uncompromising power of active love.
Romero’s rebuke to torturers, quoted above, draw on the foundational text of Judaism and Christianity, Genesis 1:27: "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them"; and on the starkest words of the New Testament, Matthew 25:40: "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
Here are more of Romero’s words that challenge our nation and all of us on this day that we claim to dedicate to love (and you can read more here and here, among many other places):
You are killing your own brothers.
Any human order to kill must be subordinate to the law of God, which says, 'Thou shalt not kill'.
No soldier is obliged to obey an order contrary to the law of God.
No one has to obey an immoral law.
It is high time you obeyed your consciences rather than sinful orders.
Many indeed would like, as the song says,
a pocket-God,
a God to get along with their idols,
a God satisfied with the way they pay their workers,
a God who approves of their atrocities.
How can people pray the Our Father to that God
when they treat him as one of their servants
or one of their employees?
. . . [T]hose who call themselves atheists,
when they are humane,
fulfill the essence of a relationship
that God wants among human beings:
Love.
We know that every effort to better society,
especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained,
is an effort that God blesses,
that God wants,
that God demands of us.
And this:
We have never preached violence,
except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross,
the violence that we each must do to ourselves
to overcome our selfishness
and such cruel inequalities among us.
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.
On this day when we celebrate love with candies and flowers, let us also renew in ourselves the violence of love.