Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Spirit & Life
"The words I spoke to you are spirit and life." (Jn 6:63)
Human Life International e-Newsletter
Volume 01, Number 43 | Friday, Nov. 24, 2006
................................................................................... www.hli.org
King of Kings and Lord of Lords

This last Sunday in Ordinary Time we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King, a feast that was established by Pius XI in 1925 as a response to the totalitarian claims of atheistic Communism. The Holy Father wanted to issue a strong reminder to the world that there is only one Ruler of the whole universe, Jesus Christ, whose authority over us surpasses the cumulative claims of all the political ideologies on earth. The world needs that reminder now more than ever because Communism hasn't gone away - it has only metastasized into numerous other fanatical atheistic ideologies as predicted by Our Lady of Fatima. Her urgent call to pray for the conversion of Russia was so that it would not "spread its errors." Yet these errors spread like a cancer over the whole earth in the last century, most especially into what we now call the abortion industry and the "culture of death."

The devil certainly has his armies, and their rampage through the twentieth century was violent and bitter. Russia murdered tens of millions of its own citizens and others in Eastern Europe; China starved to death millions more of its own people without blinking an eye; add to this the brutality of Tito in Yugoslavia, Castro in Cuba, Pol Pot in Cambodia and a host of other murderers and you have the single most devastating force of demonic destruction that the world has ever seen - that is, until abortion came. Indeed, the "errors of Russia" are appallingly evident in the abortion industry which was in some way the black spawn of their godless hatred of humanity. The systematic killing of babies in Communist countries (Russia had legalized abortion by 1921, the whole Communist bloc by 1956) dwarfs anything that Communists did with their bullets and starvation programs.

Yet, we are not to despair before all this killing: Christ also has his armies! Worship of this King is the antidote to the brutality of systematic evil. The persuasive power of His kingship is not in artillery or military strategy. It is in the holiness and witness of His most ardent loyalists: the saints. Yesterday the Church celebrated the feast of Blessed Miguel Pro, the young Jesuit priest who was martyred in the vicious Mexican persecution of the regime of General Alvaro Obregón and President Plutarco Calles. Pro was martyred two years almost to the day after Pius XI proclaimed the Feast of Christ the King. For the horrible crime of being a Catholic priest and teaching the Faith he was condemned in a mock trial and publicly executed with the purpose of showing the world how weak and powerless the Church was in the face of the God-haters. He died with a Rosary in one hand and a Crucifix in the other shouting the words, "¡Viva Cristo Rey!" (Long live Christ the King!), and much to the government's chagrin, pictures of his martyrdom spread like wildfire among the ten thousand people who showed up at his funeral.

Obregón and Calles served their atheistic ideology and later died. No one visits their graves today. Miguel Pro served a King and lives on in the hearts and minds of millions!

When we are tempted to feel discouraged by the power of ideologies that kill we must remember that we are members of the Church Militant. We serve the King of King and Lord of Lords (cf. Rev 17:14), and we continue our fight under the banner of Christ and surrounded by a great "cloud of witnesses" (cf. Heb 12:1) who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. We must march forward with the greatest hope of victory!

When the culture of death and all its arrogance is dead and buried, our King and all His loyal friends will live on!

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer
President, Human Life International