"I will not tire of declaring that if we really want an effective end to violence we must remove the violence that lies at the root of all violence: structural violence, social injustice, exclusion of citizens from the management of the country, repression. All this is what constitutes the primal cause, from which the rest flows naturally.
"Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land were lifted up to the Lord with horror of their stain to pray that he might cleanse them. But let those who, thanks to God, have clean hands -- the children, the sick, the suffering -- lift up their innocent and suffering hands to the Lord like the people of Israel in Egypt. The Lord will have pity and will say, as he did to Moses in Egypt, 'I have heard my people's cry of wailing.' It is the prayer that God cannot fail to hear.
"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters.
"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."
"Would that the many bloodstained hands in our land were lifted up to the Lord with horror of their stain to pray that he might cleanse them. But let those who, thanks to God, have clean hands -- the children, the sick, the suffering -- lift up their innocent and suffering hands to the Lord like the people of Israel in Egypt. The Lord will have pity and will say, as he did to Moses in Egypt, 'I have heard my people's cry of wailing.' It is the prayer that God cannot fail to hear.
"The church is calling to sanity, to understanding, to love. It does not believe in violent solutions. The church believes in only one violence, that of Christ, who was nailed to the cross. That is how today's gospel reading shows him, taking upon himself all the violence of hatred and misunderstanding, so that we humans might forgive one another, love one another, feel ourselves brothers and sisters.
"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."
Archbishop Oscar Romero, the martyred Archbishop of San Salvador
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