“My Kingdom Is Not Of This World”

By FR. KEVIN M. CUSICK

Mexico. 1927. A man in civilian clothes is brought before a uniformed military firing squad. As he walks from his cell to the courtyard, where the soldiers are mustered awaiting him, bristling with loaded weapons, he blesses the uniformed men, then kneels and briefly prays quietly.
Declining a blindfold, he stood and spoke, “May God have mercy on you! May God bless you! Lord, Thou knowest that I am innocent! With all my heart I forgive my enemies!”
Before the firing squad was ordered to shoot, the condemned man raised and extended his arms in imitation of Christ on the Cross and, facing his executioners with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other, he shouted the defiant cry of the Cristeros, the Mexican Christian rebels, “Viva Cristo Rey!” — “Long live Christ the King!”
When the initial shots of the firing squad failed to kill him, one of the soldiers approached and shot him point blank. Thus in Christ he vanquished the forces of evil forever.
Who was this man and why was he considered such a threat to powerful men that he had to be eliminated? The man was a priest named Fr. Miguel Pro, arrested and executed for merely doing what every priest does: praying the Mass, hearing Confessions, anointing the dying. Saving souls.
The government had passed laws making it virtually illegal for Catholics to practice their faith, and for priests and other religious leaders to make themselves known in public by the wearing of cassocks, religious habits, or other means. Masses and other forms of religious expression had to be prayed in secret, if at all, by those who had not already given up the practice of the faith out of fear.
“An assassination attempt by bombing against Alvaro Obregon (which only wounded the ex-president) in November 1927 provided the state with a pretext to capture Pro and his brothers Humberto and Roberto. A young engineer who was involved and confessed his part in the assassination testified the Pro brothers were not involved. Miguel and his brothers were taken to the Detective Inspector’s Office in Mexico City” (Wikipedia)
“On November 23, 1927, Fr. Pro was executed without trial. President Calles gave orders to have Pro executed under the pretext of the assassination, but in reality for defying the virtual outlawing of Catholicism. Calles had the execution meticulously photographed, and the newspapers throughout the country carried them on the front page the following day. Presumably, Calles thought that the sight of the pictures would frighten the Cristero rebels who were fighting against his troops, particularly in the state of Jalisco” (Wikipedia).
However, they had the opposite effect. The witness of the martyrs, their entire gift of self for the King, galvanizes the faith and heroic witness of co-believers.
Today we call Fr. Pro a “blessed” of the Church, and he is remembered with a feast each 23rd of November for his intrepid witness to the faith, to the degree of heroic virtue in the face of certain death — an inspiration to us all.
What do his life and death say to us? He declared Christ his King and he went to his death with that cry on his lips. His words and actions reflecting our faith were consistent in holiness. In the tradition of our Church around the world each October we acclaim Christ our King in our public worship.
Do our lives reflect that Jesus Christ is Lord and King? Before we can answer these questions, we must first know what kind of Kingdom it is over which Jesus Christ rules. In the Gospel He declares that His Kingdom is “not of this world” and that it is of “truth.” Blessed Miguel Pro seemed in our view to have met defeat at the hands of his enemies and persecutors just as it seemed for so many on Calvary at the foot of the Cross 2,000 years ago.
In the eyes of an unbelieving world a man dying a violent death at the hands of his enemies seems lost, abandoned, defeated. But not so for Christ and those of His Kingdom; not if such a death is as the result of humble witness to the Truth. In that witness, whether in our Sunday worship at holy Mass, our virtuous lives of daily ordinariness, or the death of martyr Miguel Pro, we share in the victory of God whose Kingdom grows in our midst as we thus love and serve Him.
We must speak the truth in everything even though everyone around us may seem to have given in to lies and falsehoods, or false gods and empty creeds. We live a daily martyrdom that refuses to betray God for any passing rewards this world proffers for those who cave in denial of the Lord and His royal preeminence.
On the day of Fr. Pro’s funeral, the man responsible for his death, President Calles “is reported to have looked down upon a throng of 40,000 people which lined Pro’s funeral procession and another 20,000 waited at the cemetery where he was buried without a priest present, his father saying the final words. The Cristeros became more animated and fought with renewed enthusiasm, many of them carrying the newspaper photo of Pro before the firing squad” (Wikipedia).
These faithful are but a foretaste and promise of the many throngs of blessed souls who now await us and intercede for us in the Kingdom of Heaven, gathered as they are around the throne of Christ our King. Blessed Miguel Pro and all the saints rejoice in everlasting love together with the angels in the beatific vision after a life of humble witness to the truth in this world.
We live once again in a time of civil disobedience, under the tyranny of unjust and evil laws of men. A man in white, who represents the Christian inheritance of Moses and the Decalogue, says rules and precepts block the way to God, attacking the holy traditions and worship handed down by the apostles and saints.
School boards declare that parents should have no say in the pornographic classroom indoctrination of their children, denying a parent’s God-given duty to be the first educators of their children.
Medical doctors ignore natural immunity and push repeated inoculations, rejecting any evidence against the practice.
In these and so many ways the Kingdom is attacked diabolically by instruments of evil, whether knowingly or not. “We must obey God rather than men” when the laws of men through evil and blasphemy deny God.
At the holy Mass for the Feast of Christ the King, we will proclaim the truths of our faith once again through the words of the Creed, then we will go forward in procession to truly receive Jesus Christ our Lord, whose Kingdom is not of this world. We will be empowered by His grace to return to the mission of our daily lives, in worship of Him each day as His humble, though unworthy, witnesses.
Pray also on this feast the Consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the Feast of Christ the King, personally if not together with the faithful following the Mass.
Our words and actions must flow from sentiments of adoring love, serving His holy will, thus dying to ourselves and our own will so as to live victoriously with Him in His Kingdom forever. “Viva Cristo Rey!” Amen. Alleluia. Praised be Jesus Christ our King, now and forever.
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