Dying for the eucharist or being killed by it? Romero's challenge to first-world Christians

Twenty years ago Archbishop Oscar Romero was celebrating mass when he was killed. Just as he had finished his homily and was about to turn to the liturgy of the eucharist, a single shot pierced his chest, and he bled to death within a matter of minutes. His bloodsoaked vestments are now on display in San Salvador for pilgrims and tourists to see. His killer has remained free.

Oscar Romero stands now as a link in the long chain of martyrs whose blood has contributed to the fertility of the Christian church through the two thousand years of its earthly pilgrimage. It was no accident that he was killed while celebrating mass. This essay explores how the eucharist is inextricably linked with martyrdom in the life of the church, as exemplified by the life of Oscar Romero. It is not simply that the eucharist is a commemoration of a past dying, the dying of Christ at the hands of the principalities and powers; it is more radical: The eucharist makes present that dying, incorporating the communicants into a body marked with the signs of death, such that Christians, as Paul says, are "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies" (2 Cor 4:10). The eucharist, in other words, creates a body of people who by definition stand in the line of fire.

All of this makes for wonderful drama. We first-world Christians want to be in solidarity with Oscar Romero and the persecuted church in Latin America. The problem for most of us here is that when we go to church no one shoots at us. We do not fear for our lives when we go to church, unless we count the fear of being bored to death. It is, of course, a good thing not to be shot at, and we should never romanticize violence and martyrdom. When we are unable to see the violence that is in fact going on around us, however, it could be killing us in more subtle ways. In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul makes clear that those who are eating the bread and drinking the cup without discerning the body of...