“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self.”
– C.S. Lewis 

On my way to choir rehearsal last week I noticed a sign on the lawn of a local church. It read: “Whoever is praying for snow… please stop.”

Driving slowly over still-slick roads, I smiled thinking about my childhood days in upstate New York where snow was an almost daily occurrence from November to February. No big deal.

But here, in the Garden State, we are not so well prepared. The threat of even a few inches will prompt a run on supplies and eat up the greater portion of news reports days in advance.

For me, it’s all good. A snow day inevitably prompts some much needed house work, buoyed by hot chocolate and my favorite TV music station.

The most recent storm uncovered my den floor and added 15 new manila file folders, filled to the brim, to my desk drawer. It also unearthed a number of videos I’ve been searching for. On the top of the list was “Romero.”

While not the kind of movie you’d normally watch when you’re in the mood to curl up on the couch all warm and fuzzy, it is the kind of movie I watch at least once a year to remind me of what it means to be a disciple of Christ.

“Romero” is the powerful story of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero of El Salvador and his commitment to social justice and the poor.

It is a disturbing movie, not only because of the violence, which was an historical reality, but because it challenges us as Christians to a new moral vision, one that that stirs up complacency and call us, as Church, to live what Jesus preached through a preferential option for the poor.

What unfolds during the movie is a dynamic journey of faith demonstrating that conversion is always possible, even for a bishop.

A timid, orthodox, predictable bookworm, Bishop Romero was elected as archbishop in February of 1977 by conservative bishops who believed he would not make waves in a land ravished by conflict as rich and poor, brother and sister, fought against each other in the struggle for land reform. Just one month later, following the brutal death of his friend, Father Rutilio Grande, along with two parishioners – a peasant farmer and a seven-year-old child – Archbishop Romero experienced a turning point, a conversion that would stir up a tsunami leading to his assassination on the altar three years later as he raised the consecrated host and prayed.

Soon after, the archbishop would say, prophetically, “We must learn this invitation of Christ: ‘Those who wish to come after me must renounce themselves.’ Let them renounce themselves, renounce their comforts, renounce their personal opinions, and follow only the mind of Christ, which can lead us to death but will surely also lead us to resurrection.”

Then, in a hospital chapel in March, 1980, Archbishop Romero spoke his last words before an assassin’s bullet took his life: “We know that every effort to better society, especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained, is an effort that God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.”

Archbishop Romero surely walked in the footsteps of Christ.

Though I have watched this movie innumerable times over the years, it continues to be a stark reminder of how far I often travel away from the path Jesus calls me to follow, the path of service and humility and surrender to God’s will. To read Archbishop Romero’s words is to remember that “we must overturn so many idols, the idol of self first of all, so that we can be humble, and only from our humility can learn to be redeemers, can learn to work together in the way the world really needs.”

Conversion doesn’t only happen in the middle of war. It happens on street corners, in prison cells and during snow storms. The important thing is that it happens.

Morrell is a freelance writer and pastoral communications consultant working from Ortley Beach. She blogs at http://wellspringcommunications.typepad.com/god-talk-and-tea