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 the name of the Lord.

The Reverend Father Jon Sobrino thus "tried like gold in the furnace" and purified and strengthened in this very dark night of death, finds the hope of the Resurrection, and shares that hope with all of us in this landmark work of our true Faith in Jesus Christ and the hope He gave us after Calvary.

For truly the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino has passed through a passion and suffering few of us can even imagine: the total and absolute destruction of the finest priests of his local Catholic Church, and countless holy poor in the surrounding mountains, all by a genocidal and oppressive US policy which funded and supplied and directed the far right wing military groups which martyred his prayer community, without cause and against justice. This same military and terrorist regime through its blood stained political ARENA party remains in power in El SAlvador, with unquestioning support from the USA, with the CAFTA agreement which is privatizing the natural resources of El Salvador and selling them to private US interests, which recently brutally suppressed the San Salvadoran street vendors so common throughout Latin America, as they do not give kick backs to ARENA. Meanwhile through CAFTA the ARENA party imports US grain, putting the local farmers out of work, furthering the remorseless and killing injustice against which the Blessed Archbishop preached, which even the recent papal exhortation Sacramentum caritatis decries as an unjust economic structure leaving the vast majority destitute, structures which the Eucharist itself compels us to alter.

We cannot imagine the agony through which the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino passes each day inexorably, yet rather than writing of this great pain and endless personal suffering this great Catholic theologian here writes of his hope and Faith in Jesus Christ, a universal and transcendental Hope, a hope which all believers may come to find even or especially when confronted with devastating situations of natural and man-made disasters such as earthquake, terrorism, and barbarism.

Examining each of these disasters, including earthquakes we are not permitted to be aware of here in the USA, from a theological viewpoint, applying theory to very harsh realities, the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino, suffering his own profound and desperate tragedies, brings us with him to the point of Hope. Let us gratefully and respectfully and joyfully join the Reverend Father Sobrino in our Pilgrimage to Hope and to Peace in Jesus Christ as he guides us upon this spiritual path which he himself is required to walk. We have heard the question: Why do bad things happen to good people? Here may we find solace and hope even in that incompehensible phenomenon, through the skilled, scholarly and experienced preaching of the Reverend Father Jon Sobrino, well grounded in the reality of Our Faith and our cardinal virtues, as we anticipate reading His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI's own reflection on Hope in Saved in Hope: Spe Salvi.