Morning Rounds and Evening Musings

The chapel at the University of Central America in El Salvador looks like any other Latin American worship space...at first. We visited the university because it is the home of the Oscar Romero museum and the site where 9 Jesuit priests were assassinated by the government in 1989 for their outspoken resistance to the Salvadoran military in its human rights abuses during the civil war. The picture to the left is of Wes standing in front of the monument dedicated to the remembrance of the Jesuit martyrs.

The effects of the civil war on the Salvadoran psyche cannot be underestimated. 75,000 people were killed by death squads or assassinations for their resistance to the right-wing (US funded) oppressive government policies. Everyone in San Martin-- the housing project that hosts Santisima Trinidad (the parish where I worked) in the outskirts of San Salvador--was displaced by the war and had lost family members and friends. The husband of our host mother, Irma, was killed by a stray bullet only a few blocks from their house during one of the final conflicts between the FLMN and government military. The stories go on and on.

One cannot help but wonder what how a recent history of tremendous violence has influenced the liturgical life of the church. It was in the little chapel of the UCA where we found our answer. There we found a memorial to the priests assassinated in the parish they served, and a disturbing picture depicting Oscar Romero and the other outspoken bishops of the Catholic Church in heaven as the military leaders and soldiers are essentially burning in hell. But the most striking, disturbing, amazing and thought provoking evidence of the pervasive effects of such violence were the stations of the cross hanging on the back wall of the chapel.

The stations of the cross are designed to facilitate a pilgrimage of sorts for Roman Catholics (and now Anglicans, Lutherans and others) during Lent. Typically, stations of the cross consist of 14 images or sculptures from the final hours of Christ's life. The depictions help the believer to focus their prayers and to experience in a deeper way, the sufferings of Christ. Usually, the stations begin with Jesus' condemnation by Pontius Pilate, the receiving of the cross, his first fall and on up to Jesus being stripped, nailed to the cross, dying and finally, being laid in the tomb. Obviously, it's a solemn Good Friday (as opposed to Easter Sunday) kind of discipline that's been around for centuries.

But, in this particular chapel that has seen so much violence, all the stations of the cross are a depiction of Christ crucified. And they are not idealized, pastel, clean, or pretty pictures either. Instead, they are drawings of real people--kidnapped, tortured, murdered and left in a killing field outside of San Salvador. The charcoal drawings were done by a friend of the chapel during the civil war. He would travel to the known killing fields every day, looking for his sister who had gone missing several months before. He didn't find her, but in order to deal with the trauma of witnessing such violence on a day to day basis, he started drawing the victims there.
It is these horrific drawings that now hang in the chapel of all places--not an art gallery or a museum, but a house of worship. We heard that there were many requests for the pictures to be taken down, especially for events like weddings and other happy occasions. After all, who wants to remember the realities of living under an oppressive, killing regime when they're at church?! Isn't church the place we preach a different gospel, one that declares Christ victor, where death has no sting and where the kingdom of peace and reconciliation is coming soon? Of course. But in El Salvador, none of those truths allow us to escape this world and cease to embrace our responsibilities to be Jesus in this world and take part in ushering in the Kingdom of God. Oscar Romero, El Salvador's contemporary martyr whose marks are everywhere clearly understood that.

These drawings bring new meaning to religious art, iconography and the liturgical function of art in church. I remember Wes telling me about a church he visited in South Africa where Desmond Tutu served as a priest during apartheid. The church harbored apartheid protesters and stood up against the police regularly. Inside, however, hung several banners left over from the English colonizers--a mark of their not-so-honorable past. Every tradition can no doubt boast merits and embarrassments alike, but more often than not we like to play up the good stuff and forget the bad. Crusades...shhh. Civil Rights....woohoo, Church! But for St. George's it is not alright to forget the past and the events that, for better or worse, have shaped them.

The same is true, I think, for the UCA's chapel. Jesus' life, death and resurrection take on a different meaning in a society struggling to recover from indiscriminate violence and corruption. Jesus' death is not simply a theological doctrine, but a point of contact between the death they have seen from all sides since 1979. What does it mean to turn the mangled bodies from a killing field from meaningless slaughter to opportunities for religious and devotional contemplation? What does it mean for someone who saw their brother or husband murdered before their eyes to look upon the bloody bodies of similar victims and see Jesus there? What does it mean to be reminded of the atrocities of the past as you return to your pew after receiving communion and upon walking out the door into the world that continues to breed corruption and violence on every corner? It is these questions that have rattled around in my mind since that Saturday. I cannot imagine a church in the States being willing to display such violence on its walls. Then again, we've never lived in a place where such scenes occupied a space in everyone's mind.

The UCA stands, for me, as a stark reminder of the church's mission in a world that is so resistant to the gospel and despite our hopes, will never participate in bringing about the kingdom of heaven. Those drawings are disturbing and horrific. And so sometimes, is this life. And yet, there is Jesus; our savior who was crucified, died and raised again to new life.