On Christmas Eve

Photo of nativity scene taken December 2005
at the chapel at Divina Providencia in San Salvador.

God keeps on saving in history.
And so, in turning once again
to the episode of Christ’s birth at Bethlehem,
we come not to recall Christ’s birth twenty centuries ago,
but to live that birth here,
in the twentieth century, this year,
in our own Christmas here in El Salvador.
By the light of these Bible readings
we must continue all the history
that God has in his eternal mind,
even to the concrete events
of our abductions,
of our tortures,
of our own sad history.
That is where we are to find our God.

Words of Archbishop Oscar Romero
Christmas Eve, 1979, three months before he was assassinated in the chapel where the photo above was taken.