Witnesses of Mercy for Peace and Reconciliation

49 WITNESSING MERCY FOR PEACE AND RECONCILIAT ION institutions including the Catholic Church. The Arch- bishop of San Salvador named me to represent him. Due to the ideological convictions that I shared during the congress, I was kidnapped and tortured on 8 January. I was saved due to massive demonstrations in the rural areas to protect my life and in San Salvador on the part of university students, the clergy and members of the National Assembly. When I was studying theology to become a priest at the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, one of the classes that was vital to me was liturgy. With Teilhard de Chardin and Romano Guardini I learned the beauty of the mystery of the resurrection. Our life on earth is only a passage. What we do here at the present time has the power to give birth to the other life or the resurrec- tion. The kidnappers were torturing me but I was not anxious; I was very sure that after my death I would resurrect in Jesus. I was telling God that that was beau- tiful because I would not die in my bed, but in donating my life for the peasants. Well, God didn’t want me in heaven. God wanted me to continue my pilgrimage. I prayed for my kidnappers and especially for those in the government who gave the order to arrest me. This experience taught me something profound and important: the meaning of death and resurrection in illuminating the spirit to understand the importance of mercy and forgiveness in any circumstance of life. At the symposium, listening carefully to the reflec- tions, full of genuine spirit by participants of many different religions, I developed a simple image to describe mercy and reconciliation. As I’ve loved trees since child- hood, it struck me that mercy is the sap that through the roots nourishes the tree’s trunk, its branches, leaves, flowers, and fruit. In religion, mercy is that sap, that living material and spiritual element that provides unity in our diversity, just as in the tree we see that the roots are not the trunk or the branches or the fruit but, nev- ertheless all the elements enjoy the same life. We can be Muslim, Jewish, Christian, Catholic, and so on, but if we share mercy we live the unity that the human family needs in order to exist in peace. Reconciliation goes one step further. It is the language of the tree’s varied sounds when it is moved by the spirit of the air. It is like a beautiful symphony that inspires us to live in love and forget about differences, to have a common language that unites us. The role of religions is to be the divine sap. José “Chencho” Alas Chencho is president and executive director of the Foundation for Sustainability and Peacemaking in Mesoamerica. He is also a member of the Tanenbaum Peacemakers in Action Network. Following his study of theology and philosophy in El Salvador, Canada, Rome, and Belgium, Chencho began working as a priest in 1961. While working in the Meji- canos slum of San Salvador, he founded the Cursillos de Cristiandad movement. In 1968, he founded the first Christian-based communities, rooted in liberation the- ology and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. During the 1980s, Chencho continued working on behalf of the poor of Central America through a variety of institutions including the Inter-American Develop- ment Bank and Capp Street Foundation. After the signing of the Peace Accords in 1992, Chencho returned to El Salvador to help found the Institute of Technology, Environment, and Self-Sufficiency. He has been given many awards, including the Peace Abbey Courage of Conscience Award in 1990, and was voted one of Catholic Digest’s Twelve Catholic Heroes for America and the World in 2007.