Witness

The power of an authentic witness, of a life intimately bound up with and marked by the truth it seeks, is undeniable. It is also unnerving. To engage such a witness, to confront the truth of such a life, is almost inevitably to find oneself led to reexamine the depth of one's own commitments, to rethink what a human life can be. In this issue of Spiritus, we feature essays about some of the most remarkable witnesses of the twentieth century. Some of them, such as Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Walter Rauschenbusch, and W.E.B. DuBois, are well known. Others, like the Cistercian monks of Tibhirine and their companions in Algeria, Sister Paule-Hélène Saint-Raymond, Sister Caridad María Alvarez, Sister Jeanne Littlejohn and Sister Odette Prévost, are hardly known at all outside of their immediate circles of family and friends. Yet, these also are integral to the meaning of witness in our time. So too are the countless souls, mostly anonymous, who have perished under the crushing weight of political or economic oppression, whose lives have been swept away, apparently reduced to nothing. To remember and reflect upon and bring to light the truth of these lives is part of an ongoing moral task given to each of us. "Those who are alive," suggests Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, "receive a mandate from those who are silent forever. They can fulfill their duties only by trying to reconstruct precisely things as they were and by wrestling the past from fictions and legends."

This is a daunting challenge. Yet it is so necessary that we face up to it, so profoundly important that we continue to ask ourselves what their lives meant, whatthey still can mean as we ourselves strive to bear witness. We engage in this work sothat they "will not be relegated to the void--to la nada" which as Jon Sobrino suggests is precisely what many wish to do to the dangerous memory of authentic witnesses.

It is also necessary to face the legacy of these witnesses honestly, to acknowledge the reality of their own struggles, the gaps and blind spots in their vision and practice of the Christian life. Apart from such honest engagement, how else can we hope to extend their vision into new and often utterly different circumstances?

In February of 1980, just a few weeks before he died, Monseñor Oscar Romeromade his annual retreat with six priests of the vicariate of Chalatenango at the PassionistSisters' retreat house in Planes de Renderos, on the hills above San Salvador. The notesfrom that retreat, selections of which are translated into English here for the first time,reveal a man struggling deeply with the weight of his responsibilities as a pastor in themidst of the growing violence in El Salvador. They also reveal how profoundly he was affected by the threats directed toward him, how much fear he felt as those threats mounted in intensity--fear for his safety, but also fear that he would somehow fail toremain faithful to Jesus and to the people of El Salvador. They reveal a person striving,in the midst of increasing chaos and violence and uncertainty, to give himself completely to Jesus, struggling to trust in God's saving power, in and beyond history. It seems fitting to give over the remainder of this space to Monseñor Romero's words.

* * *

Notes from Monseñor Romero's Last Retreat
Monday, February 25, 1980

Introductory Meditation: Why and to What End Have We Come Here?

Jesus comes to people in their situation:

• My situation is critical. I realize that I am the pastor of a diocese. Therefore I
  am responsible for the whole Church in this country.

• I realize that my words carry weight, even on the political level.

• I fear political and ideological influences. I am easily influenced and my being influenced is a real possibility.

• I am afraid that my closest advisors might come to believe that they no...