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“This may be news to you, you may never have heard my voice before, the most severe, the most demanding, the most terrible for you to listen to, [but] I have to tell you that you are all in a state of mortal sin. You now live in it, and you will die in it.”[i]
It was not your typical Advent preaching with cozy images of a mother with child or a light shining in the darkness, but it certainly remains one of the most memorable. And if you have read Redeeming Power, you will already know who the preacher was as he’s featured in chapter 9: Antonio de Montesinos. Montesinos was a 27-year-old Spanish Dominican sent as one of a four-person mission team to the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in 1510. When they arrived, the small Dominican community was horrified by the way that their fellow Spaniards were treating the local Taino population—separating children from their families, forcing men to work in mines, and treating the people as slaves. The Dominican community met together and decided Montesinos was their best preacher; hence he should be the one to preach on the treatment of the Taino at the beginning of Advent.
There’s some debate in the literature about whether it was the first or second Sunday of Advent, but there is no debate about what happened immediately thereafter. Local government leaders arrived at the door of the Dominican priory and demanded to see Montesinos. They were met by the 29-year-old prior, Pedro de Cordoba, who explained that, yes, Montesinos had preached the sermon, but it was the preaching of the whole Dominican community. The grumbling continued and Cordoba agreed that Montesinos would preach again the next week to clear matters up.
As the assembly gathered, they expected to hear an apology. Instead, Montesinos doubled down, letting them know that the Dominicans would no longer be hearing the confessions and absolving members of the community who continued to mistreat the Taino—effectively excommunicating around half of the congregation. Enraged, the people complained to the king of Spain and Montesinos was ordered to appear in the king’s palace to answer for his preaching. And so Montesinos boarded a boat back to Europe.
Advent tends to be a short and saccharine season in the U.S. Since Christmas festivities tend to start even before the leftover turkey gravy has made it into a Tupperware, we never get the chance to settle into the prophetic nature of these early weeks of December. We never let ourselves be challenged by the voices of those like Montesinos or Isaiah or John the Baptist who are longing for and painting a picture of what the world will look like when God’s dreams for it are realized—a mystery scripture speaks of as the Kingdom of God. We tend to instead talk about how we are in a time of waiting for Jesus’ birth, but in reality Jesus has already been born. What Jesus himself taught us to wait for is the coming Kingdom of God which is marked by peace. Yes, peace. But a peace that is made possible only by justice—where peoples who are oppressed, be it by Spanish colonizers in the case of the Taino or by the many evil “isms” in our own U.S. context, are given their “due” (their “unicuique suum” to use Aquinas’ definition of justice). Sharing the “spirit of Christmas” by gift giving to a family in need with girl-size 6 and boy-size 8 is a nice thing and we should do it, but it barely begins to capture what the Advent season means to be about.
I’m not sure that Montesinos’ preaching would land among those of us living in 2024 any better than it did among those living in this hemisphere in 1511. We like to think of ourselves as being open to the words of prophets, but if Montesinos were to speak to our sins today as he spoke to those of Hispaniola, we’d likely be among those banging on Cordoba’s door demanding a retraction. We don’t want to think about the evil structures of power we participate in, and especially not in the middle of “the holidays.” But our lack of receptivity to a message like Montesinos’ or Isaiah’s or John the Baptist’s does not change in any way the prophetic nature of the season. And it is in our own best interest for God’s word to find its way into our hearts and homes so that it might do the transformative, healing work that it is meant to do. It’s the only way to get to that Peaceful Kingdom that the prophets—including Jesus—speak of.
This year I am once again preaching on the Monday of the 1st Week of Advent for WORD.OP. As is the case every first Monday of Advent, the gospel of the day is the story of the healing of centurion’s servant. This year, I came to the passage thinking about Montesinos and the prophets and the social justice nature of the season, but also thinking about what did make conversion or transformation here more likely to happen. I found myself thinking about how love sneaks in to even the cruelest of systems and softens our hearts to be more receptive to change. Well, you can see what you think of that here.
The artwork I’ve chosen for this newsletter comes from my Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium. It is the earliest image of the “fullness of the Kingdom of God” that we give to young children—an image of the earth filled with the light of Christ. We don’t get into sin and injustice with the little ones, but rather simply seek to give them the joy of knowing that there will come a day in which God will be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28) and that they get to be part of it of bringing it about.
Which brings us back to Antonio de Montesinos. Long story short, the Dominican did make it back to the palace court and ended up persuading the king of Spain of the need to change the treatment of the Taino. In 1512 the Laws of Burgos were drawn up officially ending child labor, compulsory work for women, and the exploitation of laborers. The laws were not particularly effective. Atrocities continued. But Montesinos’ Advent preaching did initiate a conversation within the Spanish empire that did not end. The Laws of Burgos set a precedence for further law protecting human rights.
This Advent, may we continue to paint pictures of the peace God dreams for our earth, as we undertake the difficult structural changes necessary to help bring it about.
[i] “The Historic Sermon of Antonia de Montesinos” as recorded by Bartolome de las Casas and qtd in Three Dominican Pioneers in the New World: Antonio de Montesinos, Domingo de Betanzos, Gonzalo Lucero. Translation and introduction by Felix Jay (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002), 18.