Homily for the first Sunday of Advent
1 December 2024
Readings: Jeremiah 33:14-16; Psalm 24; 1 Thessalonians 3:12-4:2; Luke 21:25 ,28, 34-36
We begin our Advent season with the prophet Jeremiah’s hopeful vision of justice, peace and truth, a vision of heaven on earth.
See, the days are coming – it is the Lord who speaks – when I am going to fulfil the promise I made to the House of Israel and the House of Judah:
‘In those days and at that time,
I will make a virtuous Branch grow for David,
who shall practise honesty and integrity in the land.
In those days Judah shall be saved
and Israel shall dwell in confidence.
And this is the name the city will be called:
The-Lord-our-integrity.’
Listen to the full homily on SoundCloud.
We all know that we will not live to see heaven on earth. But we all live with the hope that justice, peace and truth will prevail from time to time, even more often than not, and in places and at times we least expect.
We all remember the tragic events 35 years ago when six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter were assassinated by the military at UCA, the Central American University in San Salvador. During a long running civil war which claimed 75,000 lives, the Jesuits were seen to be unsympathetic to the oppressive government. As five of the Jesuits were Spaniards, the Spanish attempted some legal processes over the years to bring the instigators to justice. They failed. Meanwhile in El Salvador, some of the military underlings were prosecuted. With the end of the civil war in 1992, a UN backed Truth Commission was established recommending ongoing investigation and prosecution of human rights violations. Just five days after the release of the report, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly enacted a blanket amnesty law. It was not until 2016 that the blanket amnesty was found to be unconstitutional.
In 2022, a court in El Salvador ordered the arrest of former president Alfredo Cristiani for the Jesuit murders. Cristiani had fled the country but his daughter issued a statement from him: ‘The truth is I never knew of the plans they had to commit those killings. They never informed me nor asked for my authorisation because they knew that I would never have authorized that that Father [Ignacio] Ellacuría or his brothers were harmed.’
Thirty-five years on, a court in El Salvador has now charged 11 people, including former president Cristiani, with complicity in the Jesuit murders. The court issued warrants on 18 November 2024 for Cristiani, the former member of Congress Rodolfo Parker, and nine retired military officers. Fr José María Tojeira SJ, spokesman for the Jesuits Central American province and a former rector of UCA, says that a trial is not enough. He wrote on social media: ‘The ideal is that the judge makes the military ask for forgiveness for what was an institutional crime. To do it publicly and to promise to take clear measures so that it doesn’t happen again [after] 35 years without the armed forces taking responsibility for the crime.’ While insisting that the perpetrators ask forgiveness, the local Jesuits have also ‘called for reduced sentences for the accused because of their age: Cristiani is 76, and the other accused are in their late 70s or early 80s’[1].
UCA’s rector Fr Mario Cornejo SJ reflecting on the lives and deaths of his Jesuit brothers said: ‘It is important to keep their memory alive, especially to keep alive the memory of their solidarity with the victims of the civil war of yesterday and the victims of today, who suffer from insecurity in society, and also the victims who have suffered more institutional violence. For these reasons we believe that it is important to keep alive their legacy to learn solidarity.’
Thirty-five years on, people are still seeking justice, truth, mercy and forgiveness. This is just one cameo from one war in our lifetime that has caused such devastation. Jesus tells his disciples in today’s gospel: ‘There will be signs in the sun and moon and stars; on earth nations in agony, bewildered by the clamour of the ocean and its waves; people dying of fear as they await what menaces the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken.’ Jesus tells them: ‘When these things begin to take place, stand erect, hold your heads high, because your liberation is near at hand.’
Advent is a time when together we express our hope with realism, our hope in the one who is to come, the one who will be born in a manger because there is no room at the inn. We hold this fragile hope with the realism of knowing that our troubled world is not going to be transformed into heaven on earth any time soon.
There was one member of the Jesuit community at UCA who was not killed on that fateful night of 16 November 1989. Fr Joe Sobrino SJ was overseas attending a theology conference. He later reflected on the assassination of his Jesuit brothers:
‘If I have learned anything during these years in El Salvador, it is that the world in which we live is simultaneously a world of death and a world of lies … These Jesuits wanted to free the truth from the slavery imposed on it by oppressors, cast light on lies, bring justice in the midst of oppression, hope in the midst of discouragement, love in the midst of indifference, repression and hatred. That is why they were killed.’[2]
During this season of Advent, we rekindle the hope that truth, justice and love will prevail, in things big and small, in places near and far.
To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
Lord, make me know your ways.
Lord, teach me your paths.
Make me walk in your truth, and teach me:
for you are God my saviour.
To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
The Lord is good and upright.
He shows the path to those who stray,
He guides the humble in the right path,
He teaches his way to the poor.
To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
His ways are faithfulness and love
for those who keep his covenant and law.
The Lord’s friendship is for those who revere him;
to them he reveals his covenant.
To you, O Lord, I lift my soul.
[1] See https://www.thetablet.co.uk/news/el-salvador-charges-ex-president-with-1989-jesuit-murders/
[2] See https://medium.com/jesuit-educated/honoring-the-uca-martyrs-the-costliness-of-jesuit-education-b5871334e620
Fr Frank Brennan SJ is serving as part of a Jesuit team of priests working within a new configuration of the Toowong, St Lucia and Indooroopilly parishes in the Archdiocese of Brisbane. Frank Brennan SJ is a former CEO of Catholic Social Services Australia (CSSA). Fr Frank’s latest book is An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge, Garratt Publishing, 2023 and his new book is ‘Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum’ (Connor Court, 2024).
