November
23, 1927. The dirty walls of the place of execution resounded with the shout,
“Viva Cristo Rey! Long Live Christ the King!” And Blessed Miguel Pro completed
his life, his arms held out wide in the form of a cross. His shout was the
defiant cry of the Cristeros, the Catholics of Mexico who were determined to
restore the reign of Jesus Christ in a land that was suffering the most intense
anti-Catholic persecution since the time of Elizabeth I of England.
Miguel Pro was born to a family of miners in Guadalupe,
Mexico in 1891. He was a very spiritual
child. He was adventurous. He was
witty. He was intelligent. He was called “Cocol” because as a child when
he almost killed himself on one of his adventures, he regained consciousness
with his frantic parents and relatives praying around him, and said, “I want
Cocol,” a sweet bread. Cocol would become the endearing name his family would
call him, and his clandestine name when he became a priest.
At 20 years old Miguel embraced his passion to live for
Kingdom of Jesus Christ. He renounced
the world and entered the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, in El Llano, Mexico. At
that time it was dangerous to be a Catholic in Mexico, even more dangerous to
be a priest. By 1914 the seminary was
closed and the seminarians fled to Texas and New Mexico, where Miguel continued
his education, eventually being sent to study in Spain and in Belgium.
Meanwhile, back in Mexico, a new constitution made it illegal for Catholics to
practice their faith outside of a few designated churches. The country continually looked for ways to
destroy the faith. Its prime method was
to eliminate priests.
Miguel was ordained a priest in Belgium in 1925. He
had numerous stomach ailments and operations.
It looked like his life would come to an early end. Perhaps he used this to convince his
superiors to allow him to return to Mexico to see his family once more. Once he arrived he joined the fight for
Christ in his homeland. The situation in
Mexico was grave. The new president,
Calles, declared that he had a personal hatred for Jesus Christ and vigorously
enforced anti-Catholic measures throughout the country. In Miguel’s home state
of Tabasco, the governor, Canabal, closed all Churches and forced the priests
whom he did not kill into hiding. Fr. Miguel Pro found ways to reach out to the
people. Catholics in a village would receive a letter saying that Cocol was
coming. He would come in the middle of the night dressed as a beggar and
baptize infants, bless marriages and celebrate Mass. He would appear in a jail dressed as a police officer
and bring communion to condemned Catholics. He would go into the rich
neighborhoods to procure funds for the poor of Mexico City dressed as a
fashionable businessman, complete with a fresh flower on his lapel. He very
quickly became a hero for the faith among the Catholics of Mexico. The government learned about him and sought
out ways to discredit him while looking to arrest him. He was accused of
involvement in an assassination attempt on the former president; caught,
arrested and quickly sent to the firing squad. President Calles had the scene
meticulously photographed and published on the front pages of all of the
newspapers of Mexico in order to scare the Catholics into submission. He even
allowed a funeral convinced that no one would come and giving him the
opportunity to say that the faith, like Miguel Pro, was dead. Instead 20,000 to 30,000 people came.
Throughout the funeral they shouted Fr. Pro’s last words, “Viva Cristo Rey.”
Sixty one year later, on September 25, 1988, Miguel
Pro was beatified by Pope St. John Paul II as an American martyr. Today is His feast day, the anniversary of
his death, November 23rd.
“Viva Cristo
Rey!” Our commitment also is to Christ
the King. Like Blessed Miguel Pro, we
cannot allow anything to destroy the passion within us for the One whose death
showed us the way to life. We need to fight for the Kingdom. This means standing up against the
materialistic forces of evil seeking to destroy to world. This means seeking out those who are longing
for the presence of the Lord. This means
serving the presence of the Lord in those who call out to us in pain, the
hungry and thirsty, naked and sick, the stranger and imprisoned, and all those
who are reduced to the lowest levels in our society.
“Viva Cristo
Rey!” Governments rise and fall, countries rise and fall, but the Kingdom of
God is forever. We are the soldiers of
this Kingdom. We are the soldiers of
Jesus Christ. We fight His battles in
our homes and in our hearts. We keep
both, home and heart, pure for Him. We
fight on the streets reaching out to the lowly of the Gospel reading. We fight in our workplaces and in our
schools, proclaiming our faith with voices that resound off the walls of hearts
of those who would wish us dead. We die
for Jesus Christ. We live for Jesus
Christ. Viva Cristo Rey!
At Miguel Pro’s beatification, John Paul, II said,
“Neither suffering nor serious illness, neither the exhausting ministerial
activity, frequently carried out in difficult and dangerous circumstances,
could stifle the radiating and contagious joy which Blessed Miguel Pro brought
to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away. Indeed, the deepest root of self-sacrificing
surrender for the lowly was his passionate love for Jesus Christ and his ardent
desire to be conformed to him, even in death.”
Blessed Miguel Pro is one of the millions of our
predecessors who shout out to us that life only has meaning when that life is
the life of Jesus Christ. We live for
Jesus Christ. We are members of His
Kingdom. We are his soldiers. Viva Cristo Rey! ■
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