Tomorrow is an important day for the Church that many will not recognize. But for our community in San Antonio, it is a window into the past — a shared past with our neighbor to the south. It begins with opening an email from my Knights of Columbus newsletter and a picture. A priest, dead on the ground. Another man, a martyr, standing in front of a firing squad. A photo of faith defying secularism, socialism, a Godless world — the state as God. The centenary of the Cristero War arrives this week, and with it the story of a people who refused to let their faith be taken from them.
To understand what that photograph means, you have to go back much further than one hundred years. This story has roots five hundred years deep — in the Aztec cities of Mexico, amidst disease, gunfire, and servitude. A world completely turned upside down. And in the midst of it — friars. Men who brought faith. Conversion.
The first man I want to tell you about is Juan Diego.
His real name was Cuauhtlatoatzin — the Talking Eagle. He was a fifty-seven-year-old widowed indigenous peasant who had survived the Spanish conquest, lost his wife, and moved in with his aging uncle. He was not a noble or a scholar. He was a farmer and a weaver of mats. Every week, he walked fifteen miles to receive instruction from the Franciscan missionaries. Many of us drive less than fifteen minutes to Mass. He was devoted. And Mary saw this in him.
In 1531, she appeared to him on Tepeyac Hill and spoke in his own language, calling him by a name of tenderness — Juantzin. She asked him to carry a message to the bishop. The bishop did not believe him. Juan Diego went back. The bishop doubted again. He went back again. He kept going back because he was on mission. When he finally opened his cloak before the bishop, roses fell to the floor — and on the inside of the cloth was the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, miraculously imprinted. The bishop fell to his knees.
After the miracle, Juan Diego moved into a small hut beside the chapel at Tepeyac. He swept the floors. He cared for the image. He told his story to pilgrims for seventeen years until his death. He owned nothing, sought nothing, asked for nothing. He was waiting, one day, to hear the words: "Well done, my good and faithful servant."
Juan Diego is you and I — extraordinary in his ordinariness, fulfilling his purpose through humility, prayer, and service. Mary calls us by name. She knows us. She is Our Mother. We have only to bring our petitions to her and she will listen. She intercepted Juan Diego on the day he tried to go around the hill to avoid her — ashamed, exhausted, his uncle dying — and said the words that have accompanied the Mexican people for five centuries: "Am I not here, who am your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? What else do you need?"
God wants us to never give up. The world will tell us we are wrong, that we are too small, that no one will listen. Juan Diego persisted because he was on mission. Don't just pray the prayers we have been taught. Pray with your heart to God. Turn off the noise. Listen to the still, quiet voice.
The second man I want to tell you about is Joselito.
José Luis Sánchez del Río was fourteen years old when he asked his mother for permission to join the Cristeros — men and women who took up arms in 1926 to defend the right to go to Mass after the Mexican government banned public worship and began killing priests. She said no. He was too young. He replied: "Mama, do not let me lose the opportunity to gain heaven so easily and so soon."
He served as a flag bearer — too young to fight, old enough to die. He was captured after giving his horse to his commanding officer so the officer could escape. The soldiers sliced the skin from the soles of his feet and forced him to walk to the cemetery. He walked on flayed feet, praying the Rosary, singing to Our Lady of Guadalupe. They offered him his life if he would shout "Death to Christ the King." He answered: "Viva Cristo Rey y Virgen de Guadalupe!" They shot him. He was one month from his fifteenth birthday.
Pope Francis — who spent his pontificate denouncing the persecution of Christians and decrying the silence of those who looked away while believers were killed — declared Joselito a saint in 2016.
*Viva Cristo Rey* means exactly what Christ said in the Gospel: take up your cross and follow me. One hundred years ago, men and women and children did exactly that — in the mountains and villages of Mexico, in front of firing squads, on roads to cemeteries, crying the name of Christ the King. They did not do it because it was easy. They did it because it was true.
Pray as if God is listening. Because He is. You are not alone — you are a faith community, united in prayer with the faithful, with the pilgrims still walking to Tepeyac on their knees, with the Cristeros who prayed the Rosary in the mountains.
I am praying for you — for all of you — and for the people of San Antonio, of Texas, of Mexico and the United States. I am praying for the conversion of souls. I pray with St. Gemma Galgani by my side, and I bring you with me each Thursday to Eucharistic Adoration.
In Christ,
*Robert Trimble, MD*
Vocations Committee — St. Peter Prince of the Apostles