Dying for the eucharist or being killed by it? Romero's challenge to first-world Christians

Twenty years ago Archbishop Oscar Romero was celebrating mass when he was killed. Just as he had finished his homily and was about to turn to the liturgy of the eucharist, a single shot pierced his chest, and he bled to death within a matter of minutes. His bloodsoaked vestments are now on display in San Salvador for pilgrims and tourists to see. His killer has remained free.

Oscar Romero stands now as a link in the long chain of martyrs whose blood has contributed to the fertility of the Christian church through the two thousand years of its earthly pilgrimage. It was no accident that he was killed while celebrating mass. This essay explores how the eucharist is inextricably linked with martyrdom in the life of the church, as exemplified by the life of Oscar Romero. It is not simply that the eucharist is a commemoration of a past dying, the dying of Christ at the hands of the principalities and powers; it is more radical: The eucharist makes present that dying, incorporating the communicants into a body marked with the signs of death, such that Christians, as Paul says, are "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies" (2 Cor 4:10). The eucharist, in other words, creates a body of people who by definition stand in the line of fire.

All of this makes for wonderful drama. We first-world Christians want to be in solidarity with Oscar Romero and the persecuted church in Latin America. The problem for most of us here is that when we go to church no one shoots at us. We do not fear for our lives when we go to church, unless we count the fear of being bored to death. It is, of course, a good thing not to be shot at, and we should never romanticize violence and martyrdom. When we are unable to see the violence that is in fact going on around us, however, it could be killing us in more subtle ways. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes clear that those who are eating the bread and drinking the cup without discerning the body of Christ in the poor of the community are eating and drinking their own condemnation. In fact, many of them are weak and ill because of it, and some have died (1 Cor 11:29-30). Paul is not speaking metaphorically; he believes quite simply that the eucharist is killing them!

THE LOGIC OF MARTYRDOM

General George S. Patton once said, "No poor dumb bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country." This makes perfect sense-but the logic of Christian martyrdom has something quite different to say.

Surely one might think that, when it comes to war, we would rather have Patton at the helm than someone like Romero. Nevertheless, in Christian eschatology, wars among nations are only a symptom of a much larger cosmic war played out between, on one hand, Christ and, on the other hand, the "powers and principalities"-all those spiritual and material forces that resist the reign of God inaugurated by Christ. In this war, Christ has triumphed not by amassing a greater arsenal and using it more efficiently to produce "collateral damage," as the Pentagon calls dead people. Rather, Christ triumphs by dying ignominiously, tortured to death on a cross, then peaceably rising again to new life. The kingdom of God is thus already "at hand" (Mark 1:15) but is not yet fully consummated until Christ comes again. In the meantime, the powers of darkness still stalk the earth and still deal in death. Because of the resurrection of Christ, however, death is robbed of its sting (1 Cor 15:55). People still die at the hands of the powers of darkness, and someone of Patton's mind might take this as an indication that Christ has not triumphed. For St. Athanasius, on the other hand, the martyrs are in fact proof of the victory of Christ: [M]en who, before they believe in Christ, think death horrible and are afraid of it, once they are converted despise it so completely that they go eagerly to meet it, and themselves become witnesses [in Greek, martyres] of the Savior's resurrection from it. Even children hasten thus to die, and not men only, but women train themselves by bodily discipline to meet it.1

Since early in Christian history, a strong eschatological element has been associated with martyrdom. About to be stoned to death, Stephen, the first martyr, raises his eyes and declares, "Look, I see the heavens opened!" (Acts 7:56). This is not simply a personal vision by Stephen of his own eternal reward. Stephen is pointing to the gap that has opened in the barrier between heaven and earth, just as the curtain of the Temple is rent asunder at the death of Jesus. Here, in imitating Jesus, in likewise cheating death of its sting, the martyr witnesses to the outpouring of the

kingdom of heaven on earth. Heaven does not simply await the martyr in another space and time upon his or her death. Instead, the martyr brings a foretaste of the not yet fully consummated kingdom to earth. In the book of Revelation, the martyrs are vindicated by the descent of the holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down from heaven to earth. The eschatological imagination sees that, although they presume to kill us, Christ has vanquished the powers of death once and for all. A martyr is one who lives as if death does not finally exist.