Palm Sunday this year falls on the day we remember Óscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who championed the cause of the poor and marginalised. He was assassinated on Monday, 24 March 1980, at the age of 62.

So, instead of concentrating on the events of the first Palm Sunday, I’d like to celebrate Óscar Romero and learn from the life of this extraordinary man, a hero of faith, prayer, and justice.

Óscar Romero was the Archbishop of San Salvador at a time of terrible violence and oppression during El Salvador’s civil war. He was a contemplative and conservative man, but a fierce opponent of economic inequality and of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of his people.

He became a beacon of hope for the poor. Although his killers were never identified, it’s almost certain that Romero’s very public stand against the injustice of the military government was the reason he was shot dead as he celebrated Mass.

Romero saw that love can’t be theoretical, neither is it soft or weak, but there is a violence to love. Not a violence that hurts people, but a violence that resists anything that harms people. It stands up to the powers that exploit and destroy others; it’s this kind of love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross.

Read: Philippians 2:5-11 (one of the Lectionary Bible readings for today).

Óscar Romero wrote: “All of us, if we really want to know the meaning of conversion and of faith and confidence in another, must become poor, or at least make the cause of the poor our own inner motivation. That is when one begins to experience faith and conversion: when one has the heart of the poor, when one knows that financial capital, political influence, and power are worthless, and that without God we are nothing. To feel that need of God is faith and conversion.”

“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.”

On this Palm Sunday, let’s reflect on the life of Óscar Romero and consider how he followed Jesus, the one who rode into Jerusalem as the Prince of Peace.