Romero

I just got finished watching the film Romero last night. I haven't seen it in years, and it hit me a lot harder this time than it ever did before.

I find myself echoing the words of many liberation theologians--we have a faith that is rooted in the cross. How hard can it be to understand this faith when one of the central narratives is about a man who is marginalized, tortured and executed. Perhaps those who hunger and thirst for justice and liberation are the ones who "get it" better than the rest, regardless of whether they have the doctrinal statements at their disposal or not. It may be impossible to ever understand our faith without an experience of the cross, and that means that most of us in middle class lifestyles may only be dipping our toes in the water, at best (many of us do carry crosses, don't get me wrong, but there's a big difference between a typical suburban American life and what you see in Romero).

A lot of people are bored with typical American religious church services. If you want something that really grabs you by the collar and shakes you, watch Romero, where saying Mass was a matter of life or death and every word rings truer than you have ever heard it on Sunday morning. This is what the faith is about to me. Sunday Mass at the suburbs we're yawning . . . or maybe we're just practicing. It all unfolds when you are at those crisis points in life.

Maybe there's no other way to understand our faith than to walk in the footsteps of the man who was marginalized, tortured and executed. Perhaps it is an experience of the cross, a thirst for liberation, where a truer understanding is. Maybe true religious insight is simply not available without that.