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Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Jack Fagan, SJ

Shortly after I was ordained a priest, I spent several months in Mexico to start to learn the language and culture. The night I arrived I stayed in a Jesuit community in Guadalajara. When I awoke late the next morning, I made my way to the kitchen, eager for a wake-up cup of coffee. An older priest sitting there having breakfast greeted me. I was able to smile and say “Buenos Dias” back to him, but as he continued speaking, my rudimentary Spanish prevented me from keeping up my end of the conversation.

I picked up something about ‘fiesta’ and ‘Cristo Rey’ and nodded pleasantly, but he soon understood that I was not in his league in terms of any kind of mutual communication that morning.

He then got up from the table, gestured to me with his hand to wait a moment, and soon came back and handed me a faded photograph. It was a picture of a soldier with a big mustache, wearing a large hat and carrying a rifle, with two ‘bandoleros’ carrying bullets crossed over each shoulder.

I sat there puzzled, wondering why he gave me the picture. Then he gestured to himself and back to the picture and smiled. Only then did I realize that he was the armed soldier in the picture.

He told me that he had been a ‘Cristero’ and that the upcoming feast of Christ the King was a very significant feast day for him and for many others in Mexico. This is where the Jesuit priest, Blessed Miguel Pro, came into the story.

Miguel Pro was born in 1891 and entered the Jesuits in 1911 at age 20. When the anticlericalism of the Mexican government post-revolution forced the Jesuits to leave the country, he and his fellow men in formation had to move.  Miguel went from California to Nicaragua to Spain, and then to Belgium, where Miguel was ordained a priest.

Among the Jesuits he was considered devout and inquisitive, a good student.

When he returned to Mexico, it was at a time of fierce government repression of Catholic worship. An armed resistance to the government, known as the ‘Cristeros’ for their devotion to Christ the King, fought against the repressive measures. This was the group to which the Jesuit who showed me his picture as a soldier in Guadalajara had belonged.

Since his youth, Miguel Pro had achieved a reputation as a jokester, fond of pulling creative pranks on family members and friends. This aspect of his personality served him well in his new ministry in these dangerous circumstances for a Catholic priest. Miguel often disguised himself in order to bring the eucharist, hear confessions, administer the sacrament of the sick and bring food to hungry families.

One of his favorite disguises was that of a clown. This allowed him to pass clandestinely to visit the people who most needed him. He enjoyed passing through the streets, fooling the authorities about his true identity.

Eventually he was caught and sentenced to death on false charges. The president at the time wanted to threaten others who resisted the anti-Catholic measures, so he invited members of the press and photographers to attend Fr. Pro’s execution. He hoped that widespread circulation of a picture showing the execution of a priest would frighten others and cause the pro-Catholic cause to become disillusioned.

The creative imagination of Miguel Pro had other ideas. When he was placed in front of the firing squad, just before the commander said “Fire!”, Miguel, rosary and crucifix in hand, suddenly extended his arms in the form of a cross and shouted, “Viva Cristo Rey!” That was the picture published the next day on the front pages of newspapers all over Mexico and in many parts of the world.

Instead of demoralizing the Catholic forces, that photo of Miguel Pro, dead at age 36, gave them courage and resolve to press forward. Catholic rights to worship were eventually restored.

Today the life and death of Blessed Miguel Pro, SJ, continue to inspire. In Mexico City, The Prodh Center is a non-profit focused on human rights.  On the Mexican/USA border, the Miguel Pro Mission helps build housing and provides a food bank for people of low income in Ciudad Juarez.  In Colorado, the new Catholic school near Denver is Miguel Pro Academy.

When we discover our vocation in life, often the part of ourselves that we might consider not very significant, perhaps even not worth mentioning, are actually what God decides to use to reach peoples’ lives.

St. Rose Phillipine Duchesne, the pioneer religious woman of the 19th century in the US Midwest, because of her age, was not able to teach or to learn the Potawatomi people’s language. So, every day she sat praying for the sisters who could. The children were amazed at how long she spent kneeling in prayer. It is said that they would leave tiny pieces of paper on her veil that extended on the ground and would come back hours later to discover that the pieces hadn’t moved. So they named her in the Potawatomi language, “She Who Prays Always”. (St. Rose Philippine Duchesne's feast day is on November 18.)

Blessed Carlos Acutis, an Italian teenager born in 1991, was diagnosed with leukemia in his early teens. He loved soccer and the video game Playstation. He also loved spending time in adoration of the Eucharist and going on pilgrimages, especially to Assisi, the home of Francis and Clare. He died when he was 15 years old in 2006. Pope Francis said that Carlos is an example of how young people can use the internet and technology to spread the Gospel. (The Church celebrates Blessed Carlos Acutis' feast day on October 12.)

God has used Miguel Pro’s sense of humor and creativity, Rose Phillipine Duchesne’s comfort with being quiet, and Carlos Acutis’ energy for the internet and the eucharist to spread the Gospel story. Are there any gifts or talents that you and I have, that we keep under cover, that God may find a way to use to bring about God’s Kingdom here and now? That might be a good question to ask ourselves today.

Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, pray for us!

Fr. Jack Fagan, SJ, is the Parochial Vicar of Our Lady of the Presentation-Our Lady of Mercy parish in Brooklyn, New York.

Previous Reflections

November 23, 2021 – By Fr. Vinny Marchionni, SJ

I’d like to think Blessed Miguel Agustín Pro, SJ watched over me during my time in Mexico.

When I arrived at the Jesuit parish in Parras de la Fuente, Coahuila, Mexico, I was given the pastoral charge of 15 (yes, you read that correctly) chapels. 5 were in the main town of Parras, some just a few blocks from each other. 10 were in the desert, in what was called La Zona Ejidal Miguel Agustin Pro (Miguel Pro Rural Zone, ZEMAP for short). Padre Pro, as he is reverently called in the Mexican Province, was our patron and with his refrain of Viva Cristo Rey echoing in my head, I learned stick shift and drove out into the desert to meet my parishioners.

And so it was on the vigil of his feast day, November 22, 2019, that I finally - finally - made it to the last chapel in the ZEMAP. It was a chapel in disrepair, weathered from the decades of drought, injustice, dysfunction, grudges - in short, sin. The parish had been fundraising to repair the chapel and so what we needed to do now was organize. So, after visiting folks houses and after celebrating mass where I coughed incessantly due to the mold within the chapel, I met with the leaders of the small community to see what we could do. Viva Cristo Rey.

Blessed Miguel Agustin Pro was born in the desert, in the northern Mexican state of Zacatecas. And while he lived in all parts of the world while the church faced severe persecution in Mexico in the early twentieth century, he nonetheless allowed himself to return to a Mexican government that did not want him and to a Mexican people whose faith called from him a loving accompaniment, a forceful ministry of presence. He donned all disguises, from dressing up as a clown to a businessman to a plumber, to ensure he could walk the streets and enter peoples’ homes safely to let them know that Christ through the church was still there for them. I smirk as I write this, knowing my own penchant to do less-than-charitable impressions of others. Kindred spirits.

In the middle of my pastoral year in Mexico, I had the chance to visit a small museum the Jesuits run from our parish in Mexico City. His remains are in the upper church and I offered a quick prayer for my parishioners. I went to the museum and saw those costumes as well as the mass kit he used when he was finally secure in someone’s home. A Jesuit on the road, really on the run, before civil authorities charged him with bogus charges of attempted assassination and executed him on November 23, 1927. And though I cannot begin to imagine being on the run as a priest, I could imagine carrying my own mass kit with me as I went chapel to chapel in the ZEMAP, in the rural zone under his care. Viva Cristo Rey.

The days turned to weeks as I went on the road organizing folks to repair the chapel. Certainly, through the Spirit and not through my own faltering Spanish did different members of the community pitch in: some folks to clear away debris, some families to hold the tabernacle and the images in their homes, some families to host the repairmen, all fully and actively participating in a liturgy of renovation of a community. Though I was not in any mortal danger like Padre Pro, I had to keep making myself vulnerable, going door to door, street by street, with a similar mission of sharing the Lord’s love through the church. In this case, not the boulevards of Mexico City like Padre Pro but through a particular church in a particular part of a desert forgotten by many, but never by God.

When the day arrived, the community had a safe place to worship and release their cares to God and the Virgin Mary and we celebrated. The relief we felt likely paled in comparison to the relief of the families Padre Pro visited, but it was palpable nonetheless for a community fighting for its existence as the desert gets hotter and as hopes dwindle. Nearly a century apart, Padre Pro and I did not have different missions; we each were drawn to offer love and safety through the Church no matter the despair around the people. He was a guide and a mentor and now I’m honored to say he is my friend.

Viva Padre Pro. Viva la Virgen de Guadalupe. Viva Cristo Rey.