"Viva Cristo Rey!"

     What an appropriate acclamation on this feast of Christ the King.  Viva Cristo Rey! ... Long Live Christ the King!  Those words were spoken by a 36 year old Mexican Jesuit priest on November 23, 1927 as he stood before a firing squad in Mexico.  His name was Jose Ramon Miguel Agustin Pro, and he was declared a Blessed in 1988.  Blessed Pope John Paul II said this about him: "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 he brought to his life for Christ and which nothing could take away."

     Father Pro lived at a time and in a country that was going through upheaval.  Mexico had a revolution and established a new constitution in 1917, one that sought to suppress the Catholic Church: only secular education was permitted, monastic Orders were outlawed, public worship outside of churches was forbidden, religious organizations could not own property, and basic human rights were denied clergy and religious.  Those laws stayed on the books until 1998.

     While not always put into practice, these restrictive articles of the constitution were strenuously enforced in 1926 and added to by a new president who hated the Church.  Father Pro returned home to a Church under siege.  He offered Mass and celebrated the Sacraments "under ground", and became known to the authorities.  He was arrested under trumped up charges, and was order shot to death on November 23rd.  He asked a favor, to kneel and pray for the soldiers, whom he blessed.  Then standing, without blindfold, he stretched out his arms in the form of a cross, declared his innocence, and then shouted "Viva Cristo Rey!"  The bullets did not kill him immediately, and so a soldier went up to his head and finished the job.

     All of this was recorded and photographed for reasons of propaganda, to scare off others, but it did not work.  The pictures became sacred images that inspired others to serve God and not man.

     That, really, is the reason for this great feast of Christ the King, which brings to a close the liturgical year.  It is to declare the Lordship of Jesus Christ in our lives, and to see him as our shepherd, whose sacrifice for us frees us from the shackles and fears that this world can impose.  We have the freedom in this place and at this time to make the same proclamation as Miguel Pro.  Not all do.  "Viva Cristo Rey!"