Washington Window: May 2007: Communion

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COMUNIÓN:

By the Rev. Hannah Atkins-Iglesia San Juan, Lafayette Square
Washington Window
Vol. 76, No. 6, May 2007

Editor's note: This new Spanish language column, Comunión, is printed in the Window in Spanish (online in Spanish here) but is available in English below.

The phrase “Threatened with Resurrection” has many layers. I read the poem with that title every year during lent in order to prepare for the Easter season. The poet and theologian Julia Esquivel, a Guatemalan exile, crafted that phrase for many reasons, but the primary reason was to describe her Christian hope. For decades, along with thousands of her countrymen and women she endured the massacres, the repression, of those in power in her country. Her response to that suffering was to cultivate, somehow, even more faith in the God of life and love. She confronted the daily threats she received with the power of her faith in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The threats were designed to silence her, to intimidate her, to inject fear into an entire people. She confronted those threats with the light of the Holy Spirit and life-sustaining resurrection courage.
Another Christian that was able to overcome threats through his faith in the eternal power of the resurrection is the theologian Jon Sobrino. Sobrino is a professor of theology who was born in Spain but has lived most of his life in El Salvador. He is recognized world over for his biblical writings and commitment to the poor. He lost his close family of friends when his fellow Jesuits were killed in their rooms at the Jesuit University in San Salvador by the Salvadoran army in 1989. He was out of the country that sad night receiving a human rights award. Six years later, I studied with him in the same classrooms where his friends had taught and where they had also lost their lives. I learned from him that the threat of death and that fear itself can be overcome by hope rooted in resurrection. A blessed life is such a life: one of hope, one in which fears are lived through and defeated, a life of resurrection. He taught about God’s love for all of humanity, especially the poor, and would explain that that love is the same love that sometimes moves us to risk fortune, fame, and even our own lives. Today, the Vatican is trying to silence his teachings. What irony, that they have threatened him with resurrection.

The liturgies of Holy Week, especially Easter Sunday, filled our souls, minds and hearts with inspiration. The rhythms and colors of the liturgical season are so important to the faithful. They are part of a rainbow of hope that guides us to God’s realm; a hope that sustains us because it is rooted in the resurrection. Today, in the Diocese of Washington, we want to carry on with that Christian hope as we share the transformative love of Christ and the power of his mission. There are many ways, both large and small by which we might do just that: open the doors of our churches to people looking for a place to be accepted, reveal the faulty logic of the Plan Z for immigration reform, reaffirm our baptismal vows, love God above all else and live, threatened with resurrection.

Rev. Hannah Atkins, Iglesia San Juan, Lafayette Square

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