To read the texts click on the texts: Acts 5:27-32,40-41; Mt 10:26-33
In 1911,
twenty-year-old Miguel Augustin Pro (1891-1927) joined the Jesuits as a novice
in Mexico. A year later a revolution erupted and by 1914 the Jesuits were
forced to flee. Via Texas, California, Nicaragua, and Spain, Miguel received
his seminary training en route to Belgium, where he was ordained in 1925.
The Jesuits
sent Padre Pro to Mexico City in 1926, hoping a return home might relieve the
priest’s chronic stomach ailment. Just twenty-three days after Padre Pro
arrived, President Calles banned all public worship. Since he was not known as
a priest, Padre Pro went about clandestinely—sometimes in disguise—celebrating
Mass, distributing communion, hearing confessions, and anointing the sick. He
also did as much as he could to relieve the material suffering of the poor. In
a letter he gave this faith-filled account:
We carry on
like slaves. Jesus help me! There isn't time to breathe, and I am up to my
eyebrows in this business of feeding those who have nothing. And they are
many—those with nothing. I assure you that I spin like a top from here to there
with such luck as is the exclusive privilege of petty thieves. It doesn't even
faze me to receive such messages as: “The X Family reports that they are twelve
members and their pantry is empty. Their clothing is falling off them in
pieces, three are sick in bed and there isn't even water.” As a rule my purse
is as dry as Calles’s soul, but it isn't worth worrying since the Procurator of
Heaven is generous.
People give
me valuable objects to raffle off, something worth ten pesos that I can sell
for forty. Once I was walking along with a woman’s purse that was quite cute
(the purse not the woman) when I met a wealthy woman all dolled up.
“What do
you have there?”
“A lady’s
purse worth twenty-five pesos. You can have it for fifty pesos which I beg you
to send to such-and-such a family.”
I see God’s
hand so palpably in everything that almost—almost I fear they won’t kill me in
these adventures. That will be a fiasco for me who sighs to go to heaven and
start tossing off arpeggios on the guitar with my guardian angel.
In November
1927, a bomb was tossed at Calles’s car from an auto previously owned by one of
Miguel’s two brothers. All three brothers were rounded up and condemned to
death. The youngest was pardoned, but Padre Pro and his brother Humberto were
executed by a firing squad. Calles had news photographers present, expecting
the Pros to die cowardly. But Padre Pro refused the blindfold and welcomed the
bullets with his arms extended in the form of a cross, crying out, “Viva Cristo
Rey!” Although Calles outlawed any public demonstration, thousands of Mexicans
defiantly lined the streets, honouring the martyr as he was carried in
procession to his grave.
The first reading for the feast from the Acts of the Apostles tell us of how the first disciples led by Peter were willing to suffer everything for the sake of the Lord. In the Gospel text from Matthew's Mission Discourse the disciples are exhorted to fearlessness because the Lord is always in control. Miguel Pro lived fearlessly because his trust was in the Lord.
We like to put halos on our saints and place them high up on pedestals so that we can excuse ourselves from being them.
ReplyDelete"the purse not the woman" and "Viva Cristo Rey!” - humour and fearlessness in the face of poverty & death - I salute this saint and hope I can become even 1% of what he was.