Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean came into my life because of the December 2, 1980, event, and changed me, and my faith, forever. I have no idea what my life would have been like without them. They shaped so much of it, created a framework of meaning in which I lived for these past 25 years. I cannot imagine my life without them. And I think that's true for many people in this country, especially women religious.

I wrote about them, told their stories, created liturgies around their anniversaries, chanted their names in the Litany of the Saints - yet I never met them. What I learned of them I received from reading their stories, their own words, their letters, from what I knew about mission in Latin America in those days, from their friends, from their communities.

Each of us knows the people in our lives in different ways. We think we know someone and then another person comes along who sees them from another point of view. Other aspects of their personalities, their struggles, their identities are opened. Over here, they trusted someone with this part of themselves, and over there something else, some other experience or insight. Identity, biography, is always complex.

I kept unpacking the story all through these past 25 years. I still do. In any life story, there are these many ways of trying to learn who people were, who they are, what they mean to us. But for those of us who come out of a Christian tradition, the other way we learn who people are is through the eyes of faith, which is a whole different way of coming to know them, what motivates them, what framework of values identifies them for us.

In the same way, while we never walked with Jesus in the streets of the Nazareths or Jerusalems of his time, still in faith we come to know him in more and more intimate ways, a knowledge still unfolding, still opening. Through the eyes of faith, there is new light shed on this story, new aspects of his life and personality, his relationships. Deeper meanings are broken open.

In many ways, we who have tried to walk in the footsteps of these four women, to come to know them, whether we had ever been with them in life or not, have been engaged in a similar encounter, one that continues to unfold, much as the gospel story in all times. Twenty-five years later, 2,000 years later, we are still engaged in a search for meaning and a deeper knowledge of who these people were/are in our lives.

There are many people, often those closest to the four women, who resisted the term martyrdom, while others were proclaiming it loudly. Those who knew them, who were family and friends, sometimes winced at the declaration, as if something was being taken, rather than given. I will say something more about this later. But I want to reflect for a moment on this business of martyrdom.

When we call people martyrs, we are making a statement of faith. To call someone a martyr is to make a proclamation of faith. We are saying that there is more to this death then what we see on the surface B in this case, more than the violent sexual assault, torture, and shooting death of four women missioners in El Salvador. When we proclaim people to be martyrs, we are not proclaiming them to be victims. Hardly. We're saying instead something about a very special way in which God has become present to us through the lives of these people that we call martyrs. The very fact that we call them that means we need to be paying very close attention to those stories, those lives, and what they have to tell us.

There was a particular moment in time in El Salvador in 1980 when their lives there, and their deaths, took on extraordinary meaning, opening up a view for us, a new vantage point from which to look at our world, a whole new reality of the world's passion and suffering, and of the action of God within it. Writing of this in the very first days after the murders, Salvadoran Jesuit Fr. Jon Sobrino declared that, Awith these four women, God has passed through El Salvador.

That's an incredible statement, and it came from the heart of the Salvadoran people. God passed through ES in the form of four US American women missioners. In a history marked by so much bad news that had come from this country, here in these women came the good news to the Salvadoran poor.

Twenty-five years later, they still speak to us of El Salvador, certainly, because, even under civilian government and without civil war, the country is still reeling with violence and poverty, legacy of the war and deeply rooted systems of injustice. Still their deaths force us to look at the reality there, reflective of the lives of billions of people around our globe.

But as their story unfolds in our lives, they are telling us something more, something with far greater ramifications; for, within and beyond El Salvador, they are showing us something important and inescapable about our world. And they are telling us something about how to be in it, how to live in a world marked by violence and poverty, where the image of God (in which we humans have been created, after all) is under assault every day; they tell us about how to live at a time in history when we can see dark times coming, when we struggle through confusion, fear, and a sense that things may be falling apart all around us, for these are the dynamics that marked the time in El Salvador in which they made their commitment to stay and walk with the people.

And in such times, their example challenges us to ask ourselves what kind of human beings we will become, who will we be as we go through these hard times.

Each one of these four women had to face that question - who will we be in this hard time? Who will we be as all hope of peaceful transition has been destroyed by the government, as civil war now seems inevitable, as bodies appear every day along roadsides, as even we are being threatened? Do we leave? Do we stay? What kind of work do we do? What does our faith tell us about who we are - as missioners, as US citizens from Cleveland and New York and Connecticut, from hard-working middle and upper middle class families - as we face a situation of a country sliding rapidly into civil war, a military dictatorship using unimaginably cruel and brutal forms of repression to crush a people's hope for life and dignity, a dictatorship whose lifeline of support came from our own government? What gives us our strength? Where does our love come from? Yes, and, what would Jesus do?

Jean was not able to leave, she said, because of the children. She found in those children something that called her to stay there and face enormous risk. Dorothy, who was scheduled to go back to the States, echoed similar feelings, struggled with that decision, not wanting to abandon the people at the time of their greatest need.

I look around at our world and wonder, what do we take of this legacy? Is this really just a story only meaningful in the Salvadoran context? We call them martyrs, which means their lives take on a larger meaning, a universal value; they are signposts pointing out the way in which we are called to be oriented in this world as we go through our own dark and difficult time, this churning, turbulent, groaning creation that is so much our experience in these days.

What do I mean?

In this time in our history, we face many unprecedented challenges: from climate change that will undoubtedly lead to much destruction and dislocation, to peak oil production, which the world will reach in the next 5-20 years and which will change everything about how we live, to confronting the limits of the earth's carrying capacity (the World Wildlife Federation in London reports that it would take two earths to support our current levels of human consumption indefinitely), to terrorism being used as a weapon of the historically disenfranchised, to the rise of fundamentalisms and the resulting battle over God, to a war that seems to have no end and what we now know of why it began at all, to a global consumption-growth economy that is finally coming to its limits – and the fact that, despite these challenges, we do not yet have alternative policies and programs to address the multiple crises to come.

When towers fall and poverty grows all around us, is it fear that rises, with its instinct of self-preservation, or does our faith kick in, as it did for these women?

How will we choose to live in this world? What kind of human beings are we going to be?

How will we be, how will we use our institutions, to put them to what kind of service? What do these times ask of us? For those of us who have community, who have resources, what is asked of us? I come back to that question over and over again. What kind of human beings are we called to be? What kind of people of faith in this time?

This all sounds very scary, but there is something essential that these women also tell us as we face these fears, doubts, confusions, and it is this: none of them was alone. None of them had to face these questions alone. None of them, faced with realities that called into question so much of their experience, of the world-view that originally shaped them, had to face those realities alone. And when the time came to put their lives on the line, this, too, they did in community, with the support of close friends, with their congregations, their communities in El Salvador, the friends who understood them and who they trusted - with the support of Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas and the church of El Salvador, and in the memory of Archbishop Oscar Romero.

Even in their deaths, they were not alone. They had each other, and I have no doubt that in those terrible hours before being shot to death, they did their best to comfort one another, to pray for one another, to offer their lives together, in the community of four that will always and forever bind them together in the litany that is itself a prayer - Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean.
It is in community that we find our courage, it is there that we find that we are capable of more than we ever imagined because we are doing it with others. For them, for us, it is the relationships that can give us courage. Our faith was founded in community, a community of accompaniment, the disciples with Jesus walking the roads of the Middle East, the women who accompanied Jesus to the cross - imagine the comfort that was for him (while the guys were off hiding in fear, but that’s another story).

It's hard to be brave alone. These women were not brave all alone either. Remember that most of us took our first trip to Central America in a delegation led by people who knew what they were doing. We were not alone. We did not face our fears alone.

Given the crises we are facing and the strength we will need to make the necessary changes in our lives, our need for one another will also grow. It will become essential that we build and strengthen communities, that we learn to love and trust one another, that we allow love to cast out not only fear, but that troubling instinct for self-preservation - as we find our courage to seek truth and pursue it, to alter our lives accordingly, to reach out to those around us who suffer first and most (as in New Orleans) when disaster strikes, to let ourselves be shaken, troubled, confused, and know that it is okay, even necessary, and that we are not alone - as these women did, as they connected with the people and with community, as they listened to the needs as articulated by the people themselves, and then responded accordingly.

Was their world shaken up? You bet. Do they shake up ours? Oh yes. And can we turn to one another and say, I am frightened, I am confused, I am troubled - and then count on the one we turn to to be there for us? Will we be there for them? Because this is what will get us through. This is Jesus coming to the upper room after his resurrection, appearing to the disciples in a time of fear and confusion, and saying, it's okay, I'm here, I'm with you, and I will always be with you.

Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean.

In many ways, these martyrs announced this new era that we have entered. They manifest something that's really important in terms of how we're going to live through this time, and what it's going to mean to be a person of faith. We have to put faith and values in a whole new context in order to be able to get a grasp of the seriousness of our situation.

Love casts out fear. Love makes it possible to take risks and do it with life and positive energy and even joy; that's what Jesus did; that's exactly what the women did. Jesus was threatened with death, too. At one time, they were going to throw him off a cliff. But he just kept doing what he was doing, preaching what he was preaching - and what makes that possible is love.

The thing about it - and we may not want to hear this - is that love casts out fear not by protecting us from the risks, but by taking us right into the risk. The fact is, Jesus went to Jerusalem despite the risk, not to die, but to do something important in his ministry, and he was abducted, tortured and crucified; and the women stayed despite the risk, not to die, but to do something essential for their ministry, and they were abducted, tortured and shot to death, and they tell us that sometimes love has a cost, gospel love has a cost. It's the part of the gospel that we really have the hardest time owning (not unlike Peter - who, remember, when Jesus said he must suffer like this, said, never, never will this happen! And Jesus said, Get behind me Satan. You don't understand the ways of God.). You know, it's fine to own it for Jesus, and it's fine to own it for people we call martyrs.

Which brings me back to martyrdom: We have to be careful, because that word can in fact distance them from us. It can make it seem as if somehow there is something exceptional about those we declare saints and martyrs. All the saints and martyrs were also ordinary people, some of them really difficult people. They were born just like us, had families, lives, daily challenges.

What made them martyrs was not that they were so extraordinary, but that they were able to love in a way that cast out the fear and made it possible for them to live faithfully, even though they knew the cost could be suffering and death.

This does not mean that they were not afraid - they were - they were deeply afraid of torture and death - so was Jesus. Love does not cast out fear by eliminating it, but by being greater than it, by making it possible for us to face it, receive it and let it go.

Most of us will never be called upon to make this kind of sacrifice, but we all face the scary necessity of change, deep and profound change. We need to ask ourselves of what we are afraid - and I don't mean in the abstract. I mean specifically, to name the fears. It is one way of taking power from them.

From this stance of faith, then, we walk through the fear and we proclaim our witness of justice, our immersion in the world - whether in our ministries, at the gates of the School of the Americas, in our demands to end the death penalty, in our alarm at the destruction of the earth's life support systems, or our concerns over fair trade, world hunger, domestic violence - all these issues that you in the Ursuline family have addressed in this 25th anniversary year. Justice becomes now not a cause, an extra, something we do in our spare time. It becomes part of our identity, our orientation in the world, what we do with our lives as we walk though our day. It changes how we live and breathe, the choices we make, even the company we keep.

Remember in the gospel that Jesus was assailed by the elites of his day for the poor company he kept, which for them amounted to scandal - prostitutes and tax collectors, blind, lame, lepers, Samaritans, those discriminated against, the oppressed, and so on. Kind of like the four women. They caused scandal by those with whom they kept company, on whose dignity they absolutely insisted. And it got them into a whole lot of trouble.

Now where do we get the strength to live like this? It comes from one of the fundamental aspects of the Ursuline mission - compassion, sharing the passion of the world. It comes of falling in love with this world and wishing that no more harm be done by our words, our actions, how we live, what we neglect.

I think it is also important to remember this: that despite the significance of the Good Friday event, the emphasis in Jesus' life was not on death, even sacrificial death. We have made the cross the centerpiece of our faith, but we tend to neglect what put Jesus there. Many, many chapters of the gospel come before the cross.

In this country, we have a strong tradition, dating back to the Puritans, of believing human beings to be basically sinful, debased from birth, and that Jesus died for our sins. Maybe lightning will strike me for this, but I no longer believe that Jesus died for my sins; but rather that he was killed because of what he did and what he said. That is clear from the gospel story, no? What's important is not so much the cross in and of itself, but what put him there. And what put him there were not theoretical personal sins piling up in my soul, but the hatred and resentment of people in power who found him to be a great inconvenience.

I think this is important for a couple of reasons: the first explanation kind of lets us off the hook - Jesus has taken care of things by dying in our place, redeeming us even before the fact; the second asks us what we are doing with our lives, insists that we look at our world and why so many are still being led to the cross, to their execution; the second makes us look at dynamics of power and how it is wielded and in what cause (for example, self-preservation, whether personal, national, or institutional); the second demands action from us - to do what he did, to follow his example, even though the cross may be the risk and the result.

When Jesus knelt down in the garden on the night of his arrest, he was afraid, he was in agony; he was praying that he not have to go through that with which he was being threatened. He knew as well as anybody what the forms of execution were in his day.

And the four women knew what the forms of execution were in their day. And our government knew it, bankrolled those doing it, covered up for the perpetrators who were our allies, concealed the truth, even to this day. What truth we have came to us only through the courageous efforts of family members, the women's communities, the human rights lawyers, a precious few good members of Congress, and the doggedness and determination of the US faith-based solidarity community, as well as the United Nations Truth Commission, won at the negotiation table by the guerrillas of the FMLN, against the resistance of the government.

Love did all that. Love created in all these people something bigger and more essential than raw fear. It did not eliminate the fear; it put it in perspective. Sometimes this was the most personal and intimate love of a mother or father, a brother or sister; sometimes it was the intimate love of friends, community members, even lovers, as in Jean's case (being engaged at the time of her death); sometimes it was the fraternal love of congregations, of other missioners; as the community enlarged, sometimes it was the love gleaned from learning the stories, of getting to know those family members and friends and seeing these women through their eyes, their grief, their confusion and pain; sometimes it was the love inspired by the gospel come alive in our time, in our world.

Love searched out truth, not only about how they died, but about who they were B who they were, really.

I also believe that we have imbued this struggle and this debate over their deaths, the causes of their deaths, and the search for truth and justice with an overly politically partisan light. God does not care what party the perpetrators of evil, or those who love God and neighbor, belong to. What matters are the actions that people take - and killing needlessly, supporting repression, torturing, disappearing, crushing the hopes of the poor, defending systems of injustice are actions about which God has an opinion, no matter who is doing them.

We remember that both Jean and Dorothy were patriots and Republicans. The story is told of the two of them raising a US flag up on a hill on the fourth of July. Jean's family was decidedly Republican - until a nonpartisan, stark, and visceral truth entered into their worldview. We know that President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, decided to continue US military aid despite the killings and the laughable claims of the Salvadoran government that it was carrying out a vigorous and thorough investigation. And when Republican President Ronald Reagan took office, he upped the ante, sending even more military aid to the Salvadoran government.
What matters is not the political party of those in power, but the actions that they take. Especially in this age, we must cast aside our automatic, and often defensive responses that come from these partisan orientations, and take a look at what is going on in our world without these blinders.

This may be hard for us US Americans. For me, one of the most essential questions that rose out of these years of solidarity work was this - what is it that the US is defending with its foreign policies? Is it to impose our western-style democracy on others? Is it to defend our freedoms - what, from the Salvadoran guerrillas? And does one defend freedom by taking it from others? Is it power? Is it access to other nations' resources for the sake of our own economy? Is it, perhaps, our own lifestyles? Does this question come back to us in this very room? Do we, by our action or inaction, show that we condone what is being done in our names?

What matters is that we love; and then, out of that love, what actions we take – again, what kind of human beings we are going to be in this world. Once we proclaim the gospel faith of these martyrs, with all that entails, we are faced with the question - not just who we are, but also what we do - how we live and what actions we take to help heal this broken world.
In addressing this question, I would suggest something along these lines: first, engage this world, be informed, learn, expose ourselves to what is going on, talk to the victims, read beyond the mainstream media, and do this without defensiveness, without a position to defend. Then, examine our lifestyles, our institutions, and ask if we are contributing to the suffering by action or neglect. Then ask how we can turn our lives and institutions into channels of redemption and transformation.

Then, witness! Whether at the SOA, or opposing the death penalty, or working for economic justice, or defending the inherent dignity of every person on this earth – live lives that enhance, rather than diminish, the possibility of the earth's renewing and healing and sustaining life in the future.

Finally, build communities of solidarity and mutual support, discuss, share confusions and doubts, fears and hopes. Create safe and trusting circles where we can allow ourselves and others to go through the process of confusion and conversion.

So what is it for us to embrace this memory 25 years later? What do these women leave us? I return to the Ursuline mission - we must all become contemplatives in the world, listeners, to become intensely quiet inside to let the pain of this earth and the hope of the incarnation rise up in our hearts, and then to walk into this world with compassion to do justice - because we are all suffering, we are all scared, we are all confused, we are all overwhelmed.
And then party - and I am not kidding. Jesus reclined at table, and he made water into not just any wine, but really fine wine. And in El Salvador, in a time of war, terror and immense suffering, the people also sang and danced, laughed and hugged, shared their little bit of food at a community celebration - they partied.

Love casts out fear - so does a good hearty laugh, especially laughter shared in community.
Many of you know the writings of Thomas Berry, the monk who articulates a spirituality of living as healing presence on this earth. In his book, The Great Work, he writes of how each generation is born into a historical context not of its choosing, each generation faces the challenges of its time, each has a great work to perform within that context. He writes, “We were chosen by some power beyond ourselves for this historical task.” And what is the task of our time? To save life on this planet. We may wish that was not the case, but there it is.

And I think these words resonate as we speak of our four beloved sisters: “We are, as it were, thrown into existence with a challenge and a role that is beyond any personal choice. The nobility of our lives, however, depends upon the manner in which we come to understand and fulfill our assigned role.” In this context, these women led noble lives indeed.
But we must believe that, having been born to this time, we have also been given everything we need to get through it, we are up to the task. As Berry writes, “we must believe that those powers that assign our role must in that same act bestow upon us the ability to fulfill this role. We must believe that we are cared for and guided by these same powers that bring us into being.”

And among those who care for us and guide us now are Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean. Their compassion and concern for us is boundless. They will be there for us, urging us on, laughing with us, weeping with us, being afraid with us, comforting us, walking with us.
Touch the fear, even embrace it. Our lives were upset by what happened 25 years ago. It hurt. It is hard to absorb, hard still to say out loud what actually happened to these four good women. But what happened to them happens every day on this planet to thousands of people. That is what they urge us to see, and then to respond accordingly - out of compassion, out of our sense of connection with all human beings and all suffering life on this planet.

Touch the fear, for this is also the space where love needs to enter. A heart well-protected cannot love. What happened 25 years ago shattered those walls and left many of us raw with pain. Here love enters, casts out the fear, fills the space with all that we need to become healing presence on this earth.

Maura, Ita, Dorothy, and Jean, are here with us - presente!