Incarnating the Word

Mural in the Hospital Divina Providencia

Today I ran across this quote from the martyred Salvadoran archbishop, Oscar Romero, in a blog entry of Brother Daniel Horan, OFM, on his blog, Dating God: Franciscan Spirituality for the 21st Century. I often hear homilies from parish priests and our bishop, which some might consider to be highly political. Here are some examples: Padre Efraín, Padre Fausto, and our bishop, Monseñor Luis Alfonso Santos. For the most part they are only trying to do what Romero was talking about in his November 11, 1979 homily, just four and a half months before he was martyred at the altar.

We not only read the Bible, we analyze it, we celebrate it, we incarnate it in our reality, we want to make it our life. This is the meaning of the homily: to incarnate the Word of God in our people. This is not politics. When we point out the political, social, and economic sins in the homily, this is the Word of God incarnate in our reality, a reality that often does not reflect the reign of God but rather sin. We proclaim the Gospel to point out to people the paths of redemption.

Here's the Spanish original:

No sólo … leemos  [la Biblia] sino que la analizamos, la celebramos, la encarnamos, la queremos hacer nuestra vida. Ese es el sentido de la homilía: encarnar en el pueblo la palabra de Dios. No es político cuando en la homilía se señalan los pecados políticos, sociales, económicos, sino que es palabra de Dios encarnándose en nuestra realidad que muchas veces no refleja el reino de Dios, sino el pecado; para decirle a los hombres cuáles son los caminos de la redención.