Where Is God?: Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope

The Reverend Father Jon Sobrino suffered the agonizing yet somewhat anticipated martydom of his dear friend, His Eminence, the Blessed Monsenor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, who was massacred in 1980 at the Offertory of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass in his small hospital chapel in San Salvador when a US trained and supported sniper entered the chapel and shot him through the heart while the Archbishop elevated the host and wine in the Offertory, offering up as well his own life. The Reverend Father Sobrino reflects as theologian, companion and friend upon the significance of this martyrdom for Our Faith in Archbishop Romero: Memories and Reflections. At the end of that bloody decade in El Salvador, the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino's entire Jesuit community in San Salvador's University of Central America, was martyred and massacred, including the great and very Reverend theologian and Catholic Priest, Father Ellacuria, professor of theology and author of several influential works such as Freedom Made Flesh: The Mission of Christ and His Church and Mysterium Liberations: Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology. Several introductory texts are available to make accessible the often highly academic and specialized writings of the Reverend Father Ellacuria, including the noted The Ground Beneath The Cross: The Theology Of Ignacio Ellacuria (Moral Traditions) and Love That Produces Hope: The Thought Of Ignacio Ellacuria as well the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino's own studies of his close companion and guide in Catholic and Jesuit community, such as Systematic Theology: Perspectives from Liberation Theology (Readings from Mysterium Liberationis) and the post-martydom, poignant and perceptive Cartas a Ellacuría (1989-2004). The Reverend Father Jon Sobrino missed his own martyrdom that evening in his Community in San Salvador when US supplied and directed military forces enterd that holy ground to murder everyone present, including the cook and her daughter, as the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino was felicitously absent from town despite his expected arrival. The Reverend Father Jon Sobrino records this history in his work Companions of Jesus: The Jesuit Martyrs of El Salvador. Thus the Reverend Father Sobrino, having passed through the agonizing fires of survivor's syndrome, finds hope in such devastating and total loss of community and of the Blessed Archbishop Romero, a hope which lies alone in Our Faith and Love of Jesus Christ. As a trained and academic theologian and prolific writer of Catholic theology, the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino discovered most unwillingly that he must apply the theory of our Faith to his own life, and thus discover the strength to carry on alone in the pilgrim mission of our evangelizing Church which liberates us from the horrors of relentless death and martyrdom and gives us live. "Oh, Death, where is thy victory? Oh, Death, where is thy sting?" NON MORIAR SED VIVAM reads joyously Psalm 117: I shall not die but live and praise th