With grieving openness one asks the question: is there salvation in history[1]? In this dark night of capitalism’s reign discernment can become malnourished, corrupted, co-opted. With searing honesty Ignacio Ellacuria stated: ‘the coming of Jesus does not appear to have turned history into a history of salvation. It does not seem as if salvation, insofar as it comes from Jesus, has made enough of an impact as to divide history into what came before and after his birth. It might have seemed so when history was confused with Western civilisation and during the ten centuries or more when Western civilisation was dominated more by ideology than by Christian faith. Even then, without denying the great contribution of faith to improving history, we were far from being able to speak of a human history, let alone a divine history.’[2]

Humanity can seem to be mere chattels of sin and evil, possessed by bitterness and hatred, as the enveloping absence of the Reign – and of salvation – continues relentlessly. This attitude must be acknowledged honestly and fought against. Looking through Christological lenses, we may ask: ‘Did Jesus fail, during his mortal life, in the proclamation and realisation of the Reign of God? Did that experience of failure force him to describe the task of realising the Reign in less historical terms? Was it necessary to resort to an imminent Parousia in which a triumphal second coming would correct the failure of his humble first coming?’[3] From fighting the good fight of faith, and from the spiritual trenches of the Lamb’s War, we have this to say: ‘the fact that salvation has not reached a satisfying fullness in history is not a definitive proof of its failure. Rather it proves that human beings, especially those specifically called to proclaim and historicise salvation, have failed in their mission. In the covenant, God’s promise has not failed, but rather humans’ responses have failed.’[4] This is our word of hope, the source of our contumacious tenderness, and our revolutionary apostolic duty.

The theology of liberation speaks of the crucified people of the global South. In the North, society is terminally diseased. Signs of ‘how far history is from being a reign of freedom and of self-giving love’[5] are everywhere. Its populations are both captive to neoliberal capitalism and in a state of collective mortal sin. Western society, after thirty years of this pernicious ideological and economic system (and over 300 years since England made its fatal covenant with capital), is the place of today’s crucified people. What can we Christians do – coheirs of the Reign of apostolic revolution – but unleash the Good News of God crucified and leading captivity captive (Ephesians 4:8), liberating and giving life in abundance? Isn’t it about time we treated these wounds of crucifixion/oppression? Shouldn’t we give spiritual chemotherapy to this cancerous dehumanisation/alienation? Will the risen Jesus then be recognised among us, rising anew even now, in this cruel night?

We urgently need collective coproanalysis (examination of faeces). We in the West have made ourselves into the faeces of capitalism’s reign. Our Christian task is opposing this barrage born of centuries of alienation and dehumanisation, let alone de-Christianisation. Luckily we have a deadly weapon (and it’s one close to the sacred heart of Jesus): the Reigning of God with and for human beings!

Revolutionaries of incarnate soteriology, we must take seriously and make concrete Christ’s word to closed hearts and minds of today’s western human being – ‘Be opened’ (Ephphatha, Mark 7:34). We must build trenches for the Lamb’s War, taking with us all the prophetic words of scripture. To the place that calls itself the “first world”, we Christians have something to say: ‘many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first’ (Matthew 19:30), and ‘all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted’ (Luke 14:11).

Christians ought to become mothers, sisters and brothers of Lazarus, crying out and striving as the crucified and risen Jesus points the Way to God’s Reign.

In this complex dance of grace and sin, life and death, we must keep vigil at the foot of the cross, constantly stirring up hope, liberation, and Good News.

Let us bear witness in our lives to the agapic prophesies falling like lightning strikes of grace upon us, pouring from the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and sweeping us up in the transcendental tide of Christ’s own Sacred Heart.

[1] History here is used in the sense of being within time, space, the present, and concrete reality.

[2] Ignacio Ellacuria, Essays on History, Liberation, and Salvation, p185.

[3] Ibid, p186.

[4] Ibid, p188.

[5] Ibid, p185.