Daily Readings:
Saints/Feasts/Fasts to be commemmorated/celebrated: First Week of Advent
BLESSED MIGUEL PRO JUAREZTUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2010
“Long Live Christ the King!”
Born in Guadalupe on January 12, 1891, Miguel Pro Juarez was the eldest son of Miguel Pro and Josefa Juarez.
Miguel was, from an early age, intensely spiritual and equally intense in his mischievousness, frequently exasperating his family with his humor and practical jokes. As a child he had a daring precociousness that sometimes went too far, tossing him into near death accidents and illnesses.
Miguel was particularly close to his older sister and after she entered a cloistered convent, he began to discern his own vocation and at the age of 20 he entered the Jesuit novitiate in El Llano, Michoacan.
He studied in Mexico until 1914 when a tidal wave of governmental anti-Catholicism crashed down upon Mexico, forcing the novitiate to disband and the order to flee to Los Gates, California.
In 1915 Miguel was sent to a seminary in Spain, where he remained until 1924. By the time he was ordained a priest in Belgium in 1925, the political situation in Mexico had deteriorated. All Catholic churches were closed. Bishops, priests, and religious were rounded up for deportation or imprisonment. Those caught trying to elude capture were shot. Celebration of the sacraments was punishable by imprisonment or death. The Church was driven underground.
Fr. Pro received permission from his superiors to return to Mexico incognito and to carry on his ministry undercover. He slipped into Mexico City and immediately began celebrating Mass and distributing the sacraments – often under imminent threat of discovery by a police force charged with the task of ferreting out hidden pockets of Catholicism.
He became known throughout the city as the undercover priest who would show up in the middle of the night – dressed as a beggar or a street sweeper – to baptize infants, hear confessions, distribute Communion, or perform marriages. Several times, disguised as a policeman, he slipped unnoticed into the police headquarters itself to bring the sacraments to Catholic prisoners before their execution. Using clandestine meeting places, a wardrobe of disguises, and coded messages to the underground Catholics, Fr. Pro carried on his priestly work for the Mexican faithful under his care.
In testimony, at the process of beatification, it was reported that at the Consecration of the Mass he celebrated the day before he was arrested, a brilliant light surrounded his entire body and his face and hands and vestments shown so brightly that those attending Mass could not look directly at him.
The next day he and his brother were arrested, having been betrayed by an informant. They were put in jail and held without trial for ten days while the government trumped up false charges implicating Fr. Pro in an assassination attempt on the president-elect, Plutarco Calles.
On November 13, 1927, President Calles ordered Fr. Pro to be executed, ostensibly for his role in the assassination plot, but in reality for his defiance of the laws banning Catholicism.
As Fr. Pro walked from his cell to the prison courtyard, he blessed the firing squad and then knelt and prayed silently for a few moments. Refusing a blindfold, he stood, faced the firing squad, and with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other, he held his arms outstretched in the form of a cross and in a loud, clear voice cried out, "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!" As the soldiers lifted their rifles, he exclaimed in a loud voice, "Viva Cristo Rey!" - "Long live Christ the King!"
A volley rang out and Fr. Pro fell to the ground riddled with bullets. A solider stepped up and discharged his rifle at point blank range into the priest’s temple.
Fr. Miguel Pro was beatified on September 25, 1988 by Pope John Paul II.
[Biography courtesy of St. Francis of Assisi Religious Goods]
(Mexican govemernment authorities were present, by order of the president, to take photos of the execution of Fr. Miguel Pro)
11:11 PM (37 minutes ago)
First Reading - Rev 14:14-19
14 And I saw, and behold, a white cloud. And upon the cloud was one sitting, resembling a son of man, having a crown of gold on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand.15 And another Angel went forth from the temple, crying out in a great voice to the one sitting upon the cloud: “Send out your sickle and reap! For the hour of reaping has arrived, because the harvest of the earth has ripened.”16 And the one who was sitting upon the cloud sent out his sickle to the earth, and the earth was reaped.17 And another Angel went forth from the temple that is in heaven; he also had a sharp sickle.18 And another Angel went forth from the altar, who held power over fire. And he cried out in a great voice to him who held the sharp sickle, saying: “Send out your sharp sickle, and harvest the clusters of grapes from the vineyard of the earth, because its grapes have matured.”19 And the Angel sent out his sharp sickle to the earth, and he harvested the vineyard of the earth, and he cast it into the great basin of the wrath of God
Psalm - Ps 96:10-13
10 Say among the Gentiles: The Lord has reigned. For he has even corrected the whole world, which will not be shaken. He will judge the peoples with fairness.11 Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth exult; let the sea and all its fullness be moved.12 The fields and all the things that are in them will be glad. Then all the trees of the forest will rejoice13 before the face of the Lord: for he arrives. For he arrives to judge the earth. He will judge the whole world with fairness and the peoples with his truth.
11:11 PM (37 minutes ago)
Gospel - Lk 21:5-11
5 And when some of them were saying, about the temple, that it was adorned with excellent stones and gifts, he said,6 “These things that you see, the days will arrive when there will not be left behind stone upon stone, which is not thrown down.”7 Then they questioned him, saying: “Teacher, when will these things be? And what will be the sign when these things will happen?”8 And he said: “Be cautious, lest you be seduced. For many will come in my name, saying: ‘For I am he,’ and, ‘The time has drawn near.’ And so, do not choose to go after them.9 And when you will have heard of battles and seditions, do not be terrified. These things must happen first. But the end is not so soon.”10 Then he said to them: “People will rise up against people, and kingdom against kingdom.11 And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and pestilences, and famines, and terrors from heaven; and there will be great signs
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