Edward Bevilacqua Edward Bevilacqua

4.7 363 G.school #182 Let your conscience be your guide

Viva Cristo Rey

I remember a story about a man named Miguel Pro—a man who, if we’re honest, probably would have fit right in with all our best saints, but also with all our best troublemakers. Miguel didn’t just want to be holy; 

  • He wanted to be in deep kinship with people who had nothing. 

  • He didn’t ask, “How can I save these souls?” It was more like, 

  • “Can I walk alongside you for a while? 

  • Can I bear a little bit of what weighs you down?”

So here’s Miguel, dodging the authorities in Mexico City, slipping out at night, disguised—sometimes a mechanic, sometimes a street vendor, always a friend. And it’s a funny thing about saints: they never seem to worry much about their safety. Mostly, they worry about empty pantries, and leaky roofs, and the fact that three out of twelve in a family he visits are too sick to get out of bed. 

One day Miguel gets word: there’s nothing left for a family. No food, no water, clothes falling apart. His own pockets are empty, so he finds a way—raffles off purses, spins a hundred plates in the air, begs a little with joy and humility. That was the crime. That was the offense: kinship with the poor, reckless compassion, unadvised tenderness.[3][4][5][6]

It ends in sadness, of course. Miguel gets arrested, accused, and condemned for loving too much and refusing to be afraid. 

And in that last moment, standing before the firing squad, he opens his arms wide—no blindfold, no bitterness, only belonging. “Viva Cristo Rey!” he shouts. “Long live Christ the King!” And what began as tragedy becomes a kind of stubborn hope—

–a grand procession of people who 

  • refuse to stop loving, 

  • refuse to stop hoping, even in the face of misery.

Maybe this is what Miguel wants for us: 

  • to stand in awe at what people carry, 

  • to let ourselves be reached by those at the margins, and 

  • to know, somewhere deep, that when love is risky and kinship is costly, that’s when joy is most real. 

Because when we find ourselves with arms wide open, echoing “Viva Cristo Rey!”—maybe that’s where Christ has always been waiting.

⁂

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