You have heard me speak of Archbishop Oscar Romero who died a martyr in El Salvador. He was shot dead while saying Mass by a sharpshooter in the back of the hospital chapel with one clean bullet through the heart.

Today we read of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We are not acquainted with shepherd in our technological world. So I thought I would hold up Archbishop Romero as an example of a shepherd, especially since this time of the year is the anniversary of his death.

Romero was a studious priest. As archbishop he continued to be studious, not mingling much with his people or being aware of their problems. During this time, the authorities, especially under Roberto Aubuisson, a corrupt government official, were committing many crimes against the people, often putting to death the innocent, as well as priests and religious who worked for the poor.

Soon Archbishop Romero became angry at the deaths of his priests. He was opposed to violence, including the violence of the growing guerrilla movement. But he listened to people, to everyone. As one peasant woman put it, "I am 70 years old, and this is the only person in my whole life who asked me what I thought." In his homilies, broadcast every Sunday to the nation and beyond its borders by the diocesan YSAX (repeatedly blown up but never long off the air), he listed with chapter and verse each atrocity committed by the armed forces -- tortures, arbitrary imprisonments, burnings of homes and churches, killings of priests, expulsions of priests, massive displacements of communities. You can imagine that the authorities became enraged at him for this. So much so that they finally hired a marksman to assassinate Romero while he said Mass in the hospital chapel for the nuns and other parishioners.

Romero did not let threats stop him from speaking out. He said dangerous things, such as telling the soldiers they did not have to obey their commanders when they were ordered to kill someone, for that was to break the fifth commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." "The law of God -- Do not kill -- should prevail over the order to kill another person," Romero said, "No soldier is obligated to obey an order that goes against the law of God. It is an immoral order." He excommunicated publicly the authorities that were responsible for the murders of the innocent. Although he received death threats, he said, "If I am killed, I will live on in the people of El Salvador."

How true his words were can be seen in the celebrations recently in El Salvador on the occasion of his death. Churches were filled to overflowing with the people, especially the poor. Highly placed prelates, bishops and cardinals came from all over the Americas to preside at the Masses said in Romero's honor. A poor old lady, grabbing the lapels of a priest, begged that the Church not abandon the cause of the poor.

Defending the cause of the poor is what makes Romero a "good shepherd." He defended the poor with his life as did his savior, Jesus. Especially at this time of year, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, we remember his passion and death. Jesus said, "Greater love has no man than that a man lay down his life for his friend." This is what Jesus did, and also what Oscar Romero did.

Romero was misunderstood by the religious authorities of his day, as was Jesus. Pope John Paul II was leery of any involvement of the clergy into politics. There was a priest named Fr. Cardenal who helped the poor by involving himself in politics to a certain extent. On a trip to El Salvador John Paul is shown in a famous TV clip, shaking his finger in the face of Fr. Cardenal as the priest knelt in reverent greeting to the Holy Father.

The Holy Father, as a young priest, had fought communism in his own country of Poland. There, the church was the greatest opponent of communism, but the church never involved itself in politics. In Central America, however, church members tried to help the poor by working in the political arena. That's why Pope John Paul II strictly warned the priests and bishops there not to oppose the government.

When Archbishop Romero went to Rome to see the Holy Father for his periodic visit, he was made to wait an inordinately long time, and then he was scolded by the Pope for involving himself in politics. The Holy Father thought the church in Central America was involving itself too much in liberation theology, which the Vatican saw as a Marxist approach. This was a completely unjust picture of what Romero was doing. But his enemies, the rich landowners in El Salvador, had made sure their complaints against Romero had first gone to Rome through the channels of the papal nuncio in El Salvador. So the deck was stacked against Romero when he visited there.

Jesus had his detractors. The religious leaders of his day accused him before the Roman authorities of wanting to overthrow the government; and the religious leaders of the Jews condemned Jesus for healing the sick on the Sabbath.

If Jesus is the Good Shepherd, then Romero was in good company for standing up for the poor and speaking out against the murderous authorities in the government who killed priests and innocent civilians.

In standing up for the poor, Romero endeared himself to the poor. They recognized his voice and would have died for him. We know the stories about how the sheep know the shepherd's voice and vice versa. It is well-known how two shepherds could pen their flocks together in a common area on the hills of Galilee without worrying about whose sheep belonged to which shepherd. That was because in the morning, each shepherd only had to whistle, or call out to his sheep, and his own sheep would come running to him.

Often a shepherd corrals his sheep on the open plain in a circle of bushes. There is usually an opening in the circle and the shepherd lays down in that opening so that, should a wolf come, it would have to enter the sheepfold over the shepherd, thus giving the shepherd the opportunity to defend his sheep even to the point of giving his life. Like Jesus, Romero knew this sacrifice and did not hesitate, by his speaking out, to follow Jesus and to die for his sheep.

In El Salvador in the 1980's, people met in small communities called "communidades de base" to avoid going to church in the big cathedrals where the authorities had spies to take down their names. The same thing happened in Russia during the cold war. Believers had to meet behind closed doors; even so, the KGB, the dreaded police arm of the communist government, would infiltrate these Christian gatherings to gain evidence against its members.

The Christians said they were not afraid of such spies in their midst because they always knew who were the members of the KGB. The Christians said it was something in the voice of the spies that betrayed them. So, too, Jesus says the sheep know the voice of the shepherd, and the shepherd knows his sheep's voice.

Jesus said in today's gospel "No one forces me to lay down my life. I lay it down freely. I have power to lay it down and to take it up again. This command I received from my Father" (Jn. 10: 17-8). So, too, Archbishop Romero laid his life down freely for his people. He knew he could very well have to die for his people, as he did, but he was willing to die. He was free in what he did. His enemies could never understand such freedom.

The murderer in charge of his assassination, Roberto Aubuisson, a highly placed government official, died recently. He never confessed to being the author of Romero's death even though his sister, a Christian, tried to get him to repent of this crime by confessing his sin. Aubuisson, however, was imprisoned by his own cowardly fear and died impenitent.

Major steps have been taken to have Romero canonized through a formal church procedure that some say reveals what the institution fears about him. He is the most powerful symbol the church faces of the dynamism of the theology of liberation's preferential option for the poor and its call to all Christians to feed the hungry and empty the jails.

...For him life came before everything else. The glory of God, he constantly proclaimed, is that the poor may live. His overriding concern was not that the person was a member of his flock, but that everyone was able to live at a human level. His priority was the same as that of the 16th-century defender of the natives, Bartolome de Las Casas, who insisted that a live Indian was worth more than a baptized corpse. And he wanted each one to be fully human, able to make his or her decisions. "The church does not need masses but people," he said. "A mass is an aggregation of individuals who are sound asleep and totally conformist. A people is a community all of whose members aspire to the common good."

As was clear both from their numbers and their active involvement in the week of commemoration, young Salvadorans -- those who never knew him in person -- resonate to Romero. In the words of Jon Sobrino, a Jesuit priest working in El Salvador, Romero represents a credible love. The poor know that he gave his life, not for the doctrine of the Trinity, not for the papacy, not for the church, but for them and for the truth.

So today we revere Jesus as the Good Shepherd. We thank him for still giving us men, prelates, who are good shepherds in that they lay down their lives for others. But we must never forget that we are all called to the same thing...to be good shepherds and to lay down our lives for one another.

1) Gary MacEoin, "Romero/Obedient to God's Law," National Catholic Reporter, April 14, 2000 Vol. 36. No. 24 (115 East Armour Boulevard, Kansas City MO 64111) ppg. 4, 6.

(Comments to Jerry at padre@tri-lakes.net. Jerry's book, Stories For All Seasons, is available at a discount through the Homiletic Resource Center.)