Reading about St. Oscar Romero this year, I was really struck by his Advent homilies (among other things!). I thought I’d provide some excerpts of these homilies here so you can be enriched by them, too.
First Sunday of Advent
“When we preach the Lord’s word, we decry not only the injustices of the social order. We decry every sin that is night, that is darkness: drunkenness, gluttony, lust, adultery, abortion, everything that is the reign of iniquity and sin. Let them all disappear from our society.”
“Some want to keep the gospel so disembodied that it doesn’t get involved at all in the world it must save. Christ is now in history. Christ is in the womb of the people. Christ is now bringing about the new heavens and the new earth.”
Second Sunday of Advent
“A religion of Sunday Mass but of unjust weeks does not please the Lord.”
“Who will put a prophet’s eloquence into my words to shake from their inertia all those who kneel before the riches of the earth—who would like gold, money, lands, power, political life to be their everlasting god? All that is going to end. … There is only one absolute: he who awaits us in the heaven that will not pass away.”
“The church could not be the ally of the Roman Empire, or of Herod ,or of any king on earth, or any political system, or of any human political strategy. It will enlighten them all but it will always remain authentically the one that proclaims salvation history, God’s design.”
Third Sunday of Advent
“The church’s task in each country is to make each country’s individual history a history of salvation.”
“We are a community of hope, and like the Israelites in Babylon, let us hope for the hour of liberation. It will come. It will come because God is faithful, says St. Paul. This joy must be like a prayer.”
“Let’s not forget, dear Christians, that the church was born of sinners. The church is holy, because it has God’s Spirit giving it life; but it is sinful and it needs conversion, because we make it up—humans tending toward evil and at times perhaps with a past that shames us.”
Fourth Sunday of Advent
“Faith consists in accepting God without asking him to account for things according to our standard. Faith consists in reciting before God as Mary did: I don’t understand it, Lord, but let it be done in me according to your word.”
“No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God—for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God.”
“The salvation we preach in Christ’s church is the same salvation that Mary believed in and that she initiated when she gave her consent and became fruitful with God’s salvation. The church is zealous to guard Mary’s belief, God’s plan for human salvation, and it will not let his plan be lost in merely human plans. Rather, it must sanctify and permeate these.”
Source
For ease of follow up, I selected excerpts all from the same source, which is Scott Wright’s very personal and insightful biography, Oscar Romero and the Communion of Saints, which I happened to review for one of my articles on biographies of saints for OSV.