This sermon was delivered at Yale Divinity School in 2021 for the class Radical Lives of Proclamation. The town of Santiago de Maria sits high up in the mountains of southern El Salvador, approximately one thousand meters, or more than half a mile, above sea level. To get there, Father Oscar Romero would travel on horseback up the narrow trail that wound around the mountain’s slope. What would bring Romero to this inconvenient spot atop the mountain was, in a way, coffee. No, he was not looking for a cup of El Salvador’s finest in some tucked-away coffee shop. He would go there to visit the campesinos, the peasant farmers who labored in the coffee fields that covered the mountains. These were pastoral visits. Romero was the bishop of the Diocese of Santiago de Maria, and the coffee plantations were his parish. Father Romero did not always feel such a close connection with the campesinos. During his first year as bishop, he never...
"I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know." (Job 42:3b)