12/3/22

I recently ordered a new book, The Gospel in Solentiname, by Ernesto Cardenal and started it yesterday. It's essentially a commentary of the gospel readings throughout the year that's composed of various conversations held each Sunday during mass between Cardenal and campesinos (peasant farmers) the Solentiname Islands in Nicaragua during the Somoza dictatorship, many of whom became revolutionaries after their community was destroyed. It's some really amazing stuff that views the gospels through the lens of liberation theology and highlights their true heart: God is love; God is on the side of the poor and oppressed; God is a God of equality, justice, and liberation; and it's our duty to do the work of God on earth.

It definitely starts out with a bang. Jesus is the word of God. God expresses themselves through Jesus, "to denounce oppression, to say: 'Here there is injustice, here there is evil, there are rich and poor, the earth belongs to a few.' And to announce a new life, a new truth, in a word: a social change" (1). "To create is a way of communication" and "when he created light and the stars, the heaven and the earth, God was expressing himself, he was communicating." We are made in God's image. God is a worker and an artist—God created through their word (poema), hence "God's poem is reality" and "The worker is the image of God, and everything he produces is good. It enriches man" (3). Jesus was born among poor workers, in a stable to a carpenter and his wife; his name means "God liberates" or "God is liberation" (9); his message was destined to be revolutionary, as Mary announces, "He pulls down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the humble. He fills the hungry with good things and he leaves the rich with nothing" (18); and his birth was announced to poor workers (shepherds), not the wealthy or kings (26). Just as God guided the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, he shall guide all of us out of the bondage of our current system.

It's heartening, inspiring, and at times challenging. And the more I read the reflections of these Nicaraguan campesinos like Oscar, Alejandro, Elvis, Felipe, Julio, Laureano, and Rebeca, the more that I truly believe Cardenal is right when he writes, "the true author [of this book] is the Spirit who inspired these comments": the spirit of unity, the spirit of service to others, the spirit of the future society, the spirit of the proletarian struggle, the spirit of equality and community sharing, the spirit of the revolution, the spirit of love (xiii). And I think it's worth listening to what this spirit is trying to tell us, to truly know Jesus and his message through the voices of those closest to him.