Brought to you by Fr. Bernardino Andrade
(bernardinodandrade@gmail.com)
SILENT PROTEST
There was a doctor in Paraguay who was very active in protests against the military. He spoke out repeatedly against its abuses of human rights. Local police took their revenge by arresting his teenage son and torturing him until he was dead. It was a horrible crime. Townsfolk wanted to turn the funeral into a huge protest march. But the doctor chose another means of protest. The father displayed his son’s body in the local church. However, he was not dressed in a fine suit. And the funeral director applied no make-up. The father displayed his son’s body as he had found him in the jail: the son was naked, his body marked with scars from the electric shocks and cigarette burns and beatings. It did not lie in a coffin but on the blood-soaked mattress from the jail. It was the strongest protest imaginable.
See Christ hanging on the cross, showing all marks of cruel torture.
I am afraid of «beautiful» crosses. I am afraid of «beautiful» Easter plays. They look so cute but they say nothing about real torture. The death on the cross was an ugly scene and beautiful crosses say nothing about the reasons why Jesus was tortured and killed. The death of Jesus on the cross was horrible. Jesus was condemned to the ugliest and most horrible kind of death. Beautiful crosses and beautiful Easter Plays say nothing about the reasons why Jesus was killed.
People in power always put the law above the suffering of the people. Power has no heart. For Jesus, human dignity and the suffering of the people were always more important than any law. Jesus was killed because He was a law breaker. He always broke any law that was against human dignity.
Trying to help a family in poverty and suffering, I confronted a social worker. She said that the laws were made to be obeyed. My answer was that the soldiers of Hitler in Germany, the soldiers of Maduro in Venezuela, the soldiers of Herodes in Bethlehem and finally the soldiers who arrested Jesus in Jerusalem and killed him also said the same thing. But that didn’t excuse them of committing the atrocities that they committed.
Jesus didn’t come to the world to die. Jesus came to the world to live and bring life to the children of God. And all those who try to do what He did take the same risks like Saint Oscar Romero from El Salvador, Martin Luther King from America and Gandhi from India and it can be any one of us.
Love and Peace,
Fr. Bernardino Andrade