Before starting on the title subject, I looked at Father Zuhlsdorf's blog, as I do every day. He has a new coffee mug with a reeely long quote on it. However, it suits our time. It's a quote from Libertas Praestantissimus (Liberty Above All) by Pope Leo XIII in 1888.
"By the patrons of liberalism who make the State absolute and omnipotent, and proclaim that man should live altogether independently of God, the liberty of which we speak, which goes hand in hand with virtue and religion, is not admitted; and whatever is done for its preservation is accounted an injury and an offence against the State. Indeed, if what they say were really true, there would be no tyranny, no matter how monstrous, which we should not be found to endure and submit to."
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From February 11 to July 16, 1858, the Blessed Virgin appeared to a 15 year old, French shepherd girl, Bernadette Soubirous. As is usual in visits by the Virgin, she asked for penitence to appease Our Lord. Bernadette was not well-schooled, was not even very good at her catechism, but she was an innocent and devout. She described the vision as wearing "a robe and veil as white as snow, she wears a blue girdle and on her bare feet rests a golden rose." When the parish priest told her to ask the Lady who she was, Bernadette complied. The answer she received was, "I am the Immaculate Conception." She said this on the Feast of the Annunciation. This stunned the priest. Bernadette didn't even know what that meant and had never heard the words before. The dogma had been affirmed some 25 years before in defense of that belief against those who disputed it. For centuries the Church held that the Virgin Mary would have had to be completely without sin, even original sin, if she were to be the vessel that would hold Christ, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. That is what is meant by the Immaculate Conception. She was without sin from the moment of her conception. She would remain sinless for the whole of her life. Bernadette was the instrument through which the miraculous spring at Lourdes, France came into being, at the request of the Blessed Virgin. Cures have occurred there since its beginning. Bernadette suffered much, always having been frail. She died of tuberculosis that had spread to her bones. She said that the spring was not for her. Bernadette entered the convent and took the name Sister Marie Bernard. She died at Nevers at the age of 35 in 1879. She was declared a Saint in 1933. Her body is incorrupt to this day, looking the same as she did the day she left this world. Her feast day is observed on February 18. We ask in the Mass dedicated to her: O God, protector and friend of the humble, ....... we pray, that by the simple way of faith we may be counted worthy to see Thee face to face in heaven.
This day is special also, because a very holy Mexican priest died on this day in 1937. Father Pedro de Jesus Maldonado was born in 1892 in Chihuahua, Mexico. He came to El Paso, Texas to study for the priesthood and was ordained there in 1918, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, February 11, and said his first Mass on that day. He returned to Mexico and established many pious organizations to increase devotion to the Holy Eucharist and to the Blessed Mother. He had a special devotion to her under the title of the Immaculate Conception.
In 1926 the terrible persecution of the Church in Mexico started. The hatred for God and the Church led to many murders and executions of priests. On Ash Wednesday, 1937, he was on his way to take the Holy Eucharist to a shut-in. The host was in a small container called a pyx. At one time Father Maldonado had said that he hoped he would be able to die having received the Holy Eucharist. That day he was captured and beaten so badly that he was nearly dead. One of his attackers took the host from the pyx, and thinking to desecrate it, shoved it at the priest. God had granted his wish, thwarting the evil that was intended. He was able to consume the host. He died in the hospital the next day, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It was the nineteenth anniversary of his first Mass.
My parish in Tyler, Texas, St. Joseph the Worker, is fortunate to have this martyr and Saint as our patron. His picture hangs on one side of the sanctuary with a reliquary and a candle burning in his honor. His feast day is now in the Church calendar on May 25.
As Father (and Saint) Miguel Pro, another and more famous Mexican martyr, shouted before being shot by a firing squad:
Viva Cristo Rey!
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