As I learned more about Mexican history, the reason became apparent. The Mexican Revolution ushered in a new Constitution in 1917, and the Constitutionalist delegates viewed the Church as a political enemy to the establishment of a liberal, secular nation-state...a kind of foreign body that worked against the development of a progressive and independent nation. As a result, many of the articles in the Mexican Constitution are anti-clericalical in nature.
Though such laws were on the books, it really wasn't until 1926 under President Plutarch Elias Calles that they were enforced...and brutally so. On July 31st, public worship was suspended for the first time in 400 years...not a single Mass was celebrated. Bishops and priests went into hiding. Those who refused to register were often fined, imprisoned, tortured, or executed. It was out of this anti-religious climate that the Cristeros revolutionaries fought back in the name of religious liberty, were able to put pressure on the government, but were eventually betrayed and mass tortured and executed.
Jose Sanchez del Rio was one of them. A boy at the time he joined the Cristeros in their armed revolution in the name of religious freedom, he embodied the righteous fire spoken of in Psalm 69:9: "Zeal for your house has consumed me, and the insults of those who insult you fall on me." Like David against Goliath, Jose was young and small but loved God with a ferocious love and those who hated the Lord and His Church he regarded "enemies he counted as his own" (Ps 139:21-22).
When he was captured, he was forced to watch a fellow Cristero executed as a deterrent, but he instead encouraged the man. He was told he would be spared if he denied Christ, but instead he fearlessly shouted "Viva Cristo Rey! (Long Live Christ the King!)" and had the skin on the soles of his feet cut off. He was then pushed into a grave shouting the same while being stabbed with bayonets--"Viva Cristo Rey!". He was shot in the face and in defiance to his enemies as blood poured from his head, he kissed the crucifix: Enraged, the officers shot him six more times. He was 15. Jose Sanchez del Rio will be canonized by Pope Francis on October 16 of this year.
What does this history lesson have to do with anything? It has everything to do with everything.
I was reading the second letter of St. Paul to Timothy this evening. Paul has been deserted by everyone in Asia (1:15) with no one coming to his defense in court, writing in "chains, like a criminal"and seeing false teaching spreading like gangrene (2:17). He also speaks of the days ahead:
"But understand this: there will be terrifying times in the last days. People will be self-centered and lovers of money, proud, haughty, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, irreligious, callous, implacable, slanderous, licentious, brutal, hating what is good, traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, as they make a pretense of religion but deny its power. Reject them." (3:1-9)
What is one to do in the face of apostasy, false teaching, and persecution?
"Proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient; convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching. For the time will come when people will not tolerate sound doctrine but, following their own desires and insatiable curiosity, will accumulate teachers and will stop listening to the truth and will be diverted to myths. But you, be self-possessed in all circumstances; put up with hardship; perform the work of an evangelist; fulfill your ministry." (4:2-5)
The fate of those who stay faithful to the Truth?
"Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (3:12)
Glenn Penner of Voice of the Martyrs Canada, said before his death,
"When people ask me, 'Do you think we will ever have persecution here in Canada?' recently I've been inclined to answer, 'Why should we be persecuted? In what way is the average Canadian Christian making such a difference for the kingdom of God that he/she warrants being persecuted? In what way does the average Canadian Christian stand out from his/her society in such a way that the offense of the cross that Paul speaks of in Galatians 5:11 is exhibited?'
"Will persecution make us better Christians? Perhaps. It seems to me, however, that the witness of scripture and the testimony of today's persecuted Church is better reflected in the phrase, 'Better Christians tend to produce persecution.'"
Paul lived his life convinced we were in the end days. He was convinced the Parousia--Christ's return--was going to take place in his lifetime. It didn't. But living as if it was--with a zealous urgency that bordered on a kind of insanity--was the fuel that set the early Church on fire.
I am not optimistic about a revolution, however. The world--our country--is asleep, and it slumbers in comfort. "In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood." (Hebrews 12:4) Those who are going forward are, like Paul, going alone or in small bands. Our Goliath in this fight is the government, the culture, and Satan himself. Unlike the Cristeros, I don't think armed resistance is in our case an answer to the war being waged. The Church is not a political enterprise, and when it fights political, it typically loses. It is, instead, an Institution for the care of souls. The war being waged goes beyond politics and nations. We need to respond as St. Padre Pio asking for his rosary--"Bring me my weapon," for as St. Teresa of Avila said in her vision "I saw souls falling into Hell like snowflakes."
If we deny Christ before men, Christ will deny us before the Father. Now more than ever Christians need to rouse from sleep, stand up, and unabashedly proclaim the Gospel in the face of false teaching, government coercion, and apostasy. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel. It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes." (Rom 1:16)
In 197 A.D., Tertullian, one of the early Church Fathers, wrote: "Kill us, torture us, condemn us, grind us to dust; your injustice is the proof that we are innocent. Therefore God allows that we thus suffer. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed."
Persecution for the sake of righteousness (Mt 5:10) is not the exception to the rule--it is the rule. It should come as no surprise that it is part and parcel with being a Christian, one who dies with Christ in order to be raised with him (Rom 6:8). Stand your ground; gird your loins with truth, and put on the breastplate of righteousness (Eph 6:14). Sell your cloak and buy a sword (Lk 22:36). Be ferocious and zealous, even if like Paul you have to go alone. Fight to the bitter end, as if your soul depended on it. Because it does. For "only the one who stands firm to the end will be saved." (Mt 24:13)
Regimes throughout history have sought to exterminate the Church. And yet she survives, thriving sometimes in the midst of the very persecutions that seek to squash Her like a cockroach. I fear apostasy and false teaching more than persecution, because it's a subtler tool used by Satan himself to deceive so that we might lose our souls in the process. I fear liberalism and secularism and materialism because they offer false promises that seek to usurp Christ from His throne and drag souls into Hell. And yet wisdom is vindicated by all her children (Lk 7:35). The Church and her faithful are free in Christ. The government, the culture, even Satan himself have no hold on them. For if the Son makes you free...you are free indeed! (Jn 8:36)
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