¡Viva Christo Rey! Long Live Christ the King!

This month of November on the last Sunday of the liturgical year we celebrate the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ the King. We certainly do believe that Christ is our King. He is not a monarch in the way that other monarchs have assumed the rule of earthly realms. In his conversation with Pontius Pilate during His Passion He said, “My Kingdom does not belong to this world.” (Jn 18:36) It is important to believe this about His Kingdom. It is also then incumbent upon us to witness to it, to live it in the world today.
           
On the 23rd of November we celebrate the feast of Blessed Miguel Pro, priest and martyr. A native of Mexico, he entered the Jesuits at an early age. He was studying for the priesthood in Mexico until 1914 when a massive wave of anti-Catholicism by the government forced the Jesuits to flee to California for safety. From there he went to study in Granada, Spain. Afterward he taught in Nicaragua. While he was away, a new constitution was ratified in Mexico that was very anti-Catholic and anti-clerical.
           
Blessed Miguel continued his theological studies in Belgium and was ordained a priest there on August 31, 1925. The following year he returned to a Mexico that made priestly ministry very difficult and practically impossible. Blessed Miguel rose to the occasion by God’s grace.   He ingeniously began to minister in secret to the souls entrusted to his care. He offered the Sacrifice of the Mass in secret for small groups of people. He heard confessions and administered the other sacraments clandestinely. He would come in the middle of the night dressed as a beggar to baptize infants and bless marriages. He would appear in jail dressed as a police officer to bring Holy Viaticum to prisoners.
           
Having a tender love and pressing concern for the poor, Blessed Miguel, attired as a successful businessman, went to affluent neighborhoods to ask assistance for those living in poverty.  In all of his secret activities, Blessed Miguel was always obedient to his Jesuit superiors. Risking arrest and execution, he offered all in loving service to his King, Jesus Christ.
           
He knew great suffering due a stomach ailment that had required several surgeries.  He was no stranger to the Cross of His King.
           
There was a failed attempt in November of 1927 on the life of Alvaro Abregón, a former president of Mexico. Blessed Miguel and his siblings were falsely accused as participants in the assassination attempt. Betrayed to the police, he was arrested and, along with his brothers, was taken to the Detective Inspector’s office in Mexico City. A young engineer who confessed his involvement in the failed assassination cleared Blessed Miguel and his brothers. However, his fate was sealed. The authorities wanted the courageous and zealous priest set as an example to anyone who would dare to practice the Catholic Faith.  The sitting President Calles ordered him executed without a trial. On November 23rd of 1927 he was martyred by a firing squad.
           
As Blessed Miguel was led out to the site of his martyrdom, he blessed the soldiers who would execute him and then knelt and prayed. He declined a blindfold. Holding his arms out in imitation of Jesus crucified, he held a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other hand. He shouted out, “May God have mercy on you! May God bless you! Lord, You know that I am innocent.  With all my heart, I forgive my enemies.” Then, before the firing squad received their order to fire, Blessed Miguel cried out the defiant cry “¡Viva Cristo Rey! —Long live Christ the King!”
           
The famous photograph of Blessed Miguel at the moment just before the shots were fired was placed in every Mexican newspaper to deter resistance to ruthless government destruction of the Church.  As God would have it, it had the opposite effect on the faithful.  Many, and especially the Cristeros, those who were rallying against the disastrous persecutions of the government, were galvanized by his martyrdom and were resolved to serve Christ and His Church.
           
Reflecting on the life and martyrdom of Blessed Miguel Pro, we see that he teaches us some important lessons about the Kingdom of Christ for own times.

• First, as we noted in our opening remarks on the Kingship of Christ, Blessed Miguel teaches us that Our Lord’s Kingdom is not one of earthly power and influence. His reign is not comprised of political agenda or ideologies. It is a Kingdom that has budded forth on the earth in Christ’s Body the Church but it finds its fulfillment in heaven. The final realization of the Kingdom will come about when Jesus comes again at the end of time and hands all over to His Father. Another way of thinking about the reality of the Kingdom of Christ is expressed in the motto of the Carthusian Order: Stat Crux Dum Volvitur Orbis—“The Cross Stands Firm as the World Turns.” Blessed Miguel teaches us by his devotion to Christ and His Church that no worldly power can give us what the Lord alone can give us—eternal life and perfect fulfillment in His Kingdom. Ideas, political parties, governments and ideologies rise and fall.  Jesus’ love for us manifested on the Cross shows us that union with Him and communion with each other awaits us in His Kingdom. Nothing else will satisfy the human heart.
• Second, in his life, Blessed Miguel teaches us that suffering has redemptive power when united to the Passion of Christ the King.  He experienced great suffering because of his physical ailments as well as a result of the persecution he experienced as a priest.  Blessed Miguel suffered with joy because he offered all to the Heart of the Savior who took all human suffering upon Himself in His Passion and Death. Blessed Miguel embraced his way of the cross for the love of Christ and his brothers and sisters. He laid down his life so that others could experience the depth of Christ’s love as they encountered Him in the sacraments of the Church, especially the Holy Eucharist. He embodied in his life the words of Jesus in St. John’s Gospel, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. “ (Jn 15:13)  We can lay down our life for one another because Jesus laid down His life on the Cross for us.
• Finally, Blessed Miguel teaches us that each of us is called to witness to the coming of the Kingdom in ordinary and sometimes extraordinary ways.  While he did this throughout his life, at the moment of his death he most eloquently proclaimed in word and deed the reality and the power of the Kingdom of Christ. He blessed the men who would take his life. He forgave his persecutors and begged God’s mercy upon them. Then, holding out his arms as Jesus did on the Cross, he bore in his hands a crucifix, the sign of salvation, and a rosary, the instrument of trusting prayer; he preached his most powerful sermon raising a cry that was heard around the world and continues to echo to this day  “¡Viva Cristo Rey! Long live Christ the King!”

Thank you, Blessed Miguel Pro, for teaching us that the Kingdom of Christ, and not the kingdom of this world with all its half-truths and confusion, is worth living for and dying for.

Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh