SOME CHRISTMAS SAYINGS BY OSCAR ROMERO

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.

December 24, 1978

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Along with you, my dear brothers and sisters, I too need to receive the good tidings tonight. As shepherd I must announce it, but as shepherd I must also be one of those shepherds of Bethlehem and receive from the angels the news that stirs our hearts. Let us receive it, you and I, with the same simplicity and humility as those shepherds did. The more simple and humble, the more poor and detached from ourselves, the more full of troubles and problems we are, the more bewildering life’s ways, all the more must we look up to the skies and hear the great news: "A Saviour is born to you." And let us listen in chorus to that great news, sung throughout the universe: "Glory to God in the heavens, and on earth peace to those whom God loves." (Luke 2:11, 14.)

December 225, 1978

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Through the church’s eyes I see the great deficiencies in our Christianity... superstitions, traditionalism, scandal.. .And those who have money even publish those scandals as though they were defending genuine values. They don’t realize that they are defending the indefensible: a lie, a falsehood, a lifeless traditionalism, and, much worse, certain economic interests, which, lamentably, the church served. But that was a sin of the church, deceiving and not telling the truth when it should have.

December 31, 1978