The Violence of Love

Let me pass on a book recommendation. I've been reading a lot lately about Oscar Romero. And one of the best introductions to his theology is the edited book by James Brockman entitled The Violence of Love. In the book Brockman gives us short selections of Romero's sermons and writings during the three year period when he transformed himself from defender of the status quo to prophet and martyr. The title of the book comes from a quote of Romero's from November 27, 1977:

We have never preached violence,
except the violence of love,
which left Christ nailed to a cross,
the violence that we must each do to ourselves
to overcome our selfishness
and such cruel inequalities among us.
The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword,
the violence of hatred.
It is the violence of love,
of brotherhood,
the violence that wills to beat weapons
into sickles for work.

Most of the book consists of short quotations from Romero which are rendered like free verse (as illustrated above). I think this was Brockman's editorial hand at work. Regardless, it's wonderful. The Violence of Love reads like theological poetry.

If you want to be introduced to Romero's life you might want to start with the movie Romero, which, I discovered, has been uploaded to Youtube in eleven 10-minute segments. You can start watching the movie here.