As I was going through this month’s Magnificat magazine and which overlapped with my reading of The Power and the Glory, I came across this passage which instantly recalled the novel. Magnificat has a regular feature where it provides a short biography of a saint, and each issue coordinates the saints’ by a topic. In this issue the topic was “Saints Who Were Leaders.” I was shocked to find this saint I had never heard of, but was very much relevant to the Cristero War and of course The Power and the Glory.
Saint Who? Saints Who Were Leaders
Saint Josè María Robles Hurtado
Martyr († 1927) Feast: June 26
A native in Mascota in
Jailisco, Mexico, Josè was ordained a priest at twenty-four and two years later
founded the Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with a focus on Eucharistic
devotion. After several years in mission
work, he was assigned to a parish.
Although a new Mexican constitution outlawed public devotions, Josè went
forward nevertheless with a bold plan to erect a giant cross devoted to Christ
the King in the geographic center of Mexico.
To announce the laying of the cornerstone, he had signs placed
throughout the countryside declaring Christ the “King of Mexico.”
After this the
authorities began to put increasing pressure on Josè to curtail his work. He was forced into hiding, but he continued
to minister to his parishioners in secret.
On the feast of the Sacred Heart, June 25, 1927, he was arrested when he
was about to say a private Mass in a family home. The next day, he was taken to a large oak
tree outside a nearby village and hanged.
Josè placed the noose on his own neck so that none of his executioners
would bear the guilt of that act.
Shortly beforehand, Josè
had penned a poem anticipating his death: “I want to love you until
martyrdom…/With my soul I bless you, my Sacred Heart./Tell me: is the instant
of my eternal union near?/Stretch out your arms, O Jesus/Because I am your
“little one.”
Loving
Father, through the intercession of Saint Josè María Robles Hurtado, take me at
the moment of my death into your eternal embrace.
(p. 80, Magnificat, Aug. 2021, Vol. 23, No. 6.)
That
cross Josè built might be the same cross in the fourth chapter of Part 2, the
giant cross the Indian woman places her dead child at the foot.
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