East of Eden: El Salvador

He spoke

each night

on the radio.

Crackling across kitchens

and darkened barrios,

his voice

walked through walls,

lingered among the people,

a challenge to the powerful.

Farmers stopped

to listen.

Soldiers too.

He named the dead,

named the killers.

Named the hope

that God had not forgotten

those without

a voice.

He knew

what it would cost.

“If they kill me,”

he said,

“I will rise again

in the people.”

And he did.

But first,

he watched San Salvador

shake with sirens,

heard the boots

and broken glass

on Calle Rubén Darío,

saw the church walls

blackened with slogans:

'No more martyrs'

painted beside

fresh bullet holes.

He knew the corridors

of power—

had sat with ministers

who sipped coffee

and smiled

while the poor bled.

This priest preferred

the voices on the street.

The woman in Aguilares

with nine kids

and no home.

The baker whose oven

had been seized

for feeding rebels.

The teenager

beaten for carrying

the wrong book.

He preached

from a pulpit

and from pavement.

He said,

'A Church

that does not unite itself

with the poor

to denounce injustice

is not the true Church

of Jesus Christ.'

He carried

his cassock like a target,

his Bible like a blade.

Not to harm,

but to reveal.

He’d once believed

in gentler things—

obedience,

order,

quiet service.

But love

had made him

dangerous.

The shelves in his study

were not decorative.

Worn paperbacks,

corners folded:

Jesus the Liberator,

The True Church and the People,

The Cry of the Oppressed.

A photo of Rutilio

taped to the wall.

He spoke in tones

that shook palaces.

And still,

he prayed.

Still,

he offered

bread and wine

while streets burned.

Still,

he believed in

Crucifixion and

resurrection—

not as symbol,

but as strategy.

He said,

“There are many things

that cannot be seen

except by eyes that have cried.”

He had cried.

And he had seen.

He offered

his last homily

as if it might

be his last.

Because he knew.

They had warned him.

Watched him.

He spoke anyway.

And when the bullet came,

it did not silence him.

It planted him.

And now—

in Soyapango and Mejicanos,

in chapels and coffee fields,

in radio frequencies

still humming

with memory—

he rises.

East of Eden,

he walked

with the crucified poor.

A follower of Jesus,

A friend of the poor,

A Priest,

then a prophet,

now a saint—

planted like seed.

And rising still.

-Rev'd Jon Swales