On the day of the canonization, we awoke at 5:00am to head to the Vatican for the 10:00am ceremony. The surrounding area was already packed with people, many of whom were Salvadorans donning blue hats and Salvadoran flags. This moment obviously meant something particularly special to them, and it was an honor to witness it together.
In line, we were next to a Salvadoran couple who showed us images and videos of the current scene in San Salvador, where incredible crowds were celebrating and waiting with joy for the ceremony. The gates opened at 7:00am and everyone flooded into St. Peter’s Square. As we waited, tired but with eager anticipation, I looked around and appreciated the diversity of the crowd – a profound symbol of our global church. We were gathered in thanksgiving for the lives of one of the seven individuals being honored that day – all of whom had courageously dedicated themselves in service to God’s call.
Upon entering St. Peter’s, I was struck by the juxtaposition of the grandness of the Vatican and the portrait of St. Romero that hung from its exterior. My prayer that day was for the spirit of Romero to fill the whole church – empowering and guiding us closer to the mission of God: a mission embodied by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and made continually present by the lives of saints, prophets, and martyrs. In a church that has so frequently fallen short in its mission as a sacrament of liberation (to use the phrase of Jesuit martyr Ignacio Ellacuría, SJ), by making Óscar Romero a saint, the church (formally) lifted his life and ministry up as a model for discipleship, one that makes demands on all of us.
In his homily that day, Pope Francis said, “Jesus is radical. He gives all and he asks all: he gives a love that is total and asks for an undivided heart…We cannot give him, who offers us eternal life, some odd moment of time. Jesus is not content with a ‘percentage of love’: we cannot love him twenty or fifty or sixty percent. It is either all or nothing.” He continued by asserting that Romero “left the security of the world, even his own safety, in order to give his life according to the Gospel, close to the poor and to his people, with a heart drawn to Jesus and his brothers and sisters… All these saints, in different contexts, put today’s word into practice in their lives, without lukewarmness, without calculation, with the passion to risk everything and to leave it all.”
It is this spirit, love, and passion that first drew me to Romero in such a profound way six years ago and ultimately helped me reconnect with my faith. This journey made my attendance at his canonization even more special. As I prepare to enter full-time ministry come graduation in May, I pray to God to be continually guided in a lifelong journey of conversion and discipleship, oriented toward God’s call for me, and with Saint Romero as source of hope.
