A devotional for grown-ups
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The Christian publishing market is flooded with saccharin flavoured daily devotionals with little power to move the soul. I don't think this book is written as a daily devotional but I would certainly recommend reading that way. If you do it will change the way you look at the world around you and provoke you into living your life for a cause bigger than yourself. The Violence of Love is basically a themed collection of bite-sized homilies from San Salvador's famously outspoken (and famously assassinated) Archbishop Oscar Romero. Whilst the tumultus revolutionary context of the book is ever-present Romero's prophetic voice echoes in every corrupt corner of the world - including in our own hearts. Here's a snippet:
"It is very easy to be servants of the word without disturbing the world: a very spiritualized word, a word without any commitment to history, a word that can sound in any part of the world because it belongs to no part of the world. A word like that creates no problems, starts no conflicts.
What starts conflicts and persecutions, what marks the genuine church, is the word that, burning like the word of the prophets, proclaims and accuses: proclaims to the people God's wonders to be believed and venerated, and accuses of sin those who oppose God's reign, so that they may tear that sin out of their hearts, out of their societies, out of their laws -- out of the structures that oppress, that imprison, that violate the rights of God and of humanity.
This is the hard service of the word. But God's Spirit goes with the prophet, with the preacher, for he is Christ, who keeps on proclaiming his reign to the people of all times."
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