This weekend, the first ever national Encuentro for Hispanic youth is being hosted at Notre Dame.
Archbishop Gomez of San Antonio gave the keynote last night, and here’s the text (pdf file)
He begins by recalling the introduction of the faith in the Americas by Spanish missionaries, and continues by telling the story of some 20th century martyrs:
In this spirit, I would like to talk to you today about Blessed Jose Anacleto Gonzalez Flores and his eight companions. They are among the Church’s newest “blesseds,” beatified in Guadalajara, Mexico in November 2005.
Blessed Anacleto and his companions were ordinary Catholics. One was a priest, the rest lay people. Some, like Blessed Anacleto, were pastoral ministers, teaching the faith and helping the poor. One was an auto mechanic. Another was a musician, and another a student. Almost all of them were married and some were fathers of large families. One, Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio, was killed just weeks before his 15th birthday.
These young people were 20th–century martyrs. They were among the thousands tortured and murdered for defending their faith in Jesus Christ at a time, in the 1920s, when Mexico’s government was persecuting the Church.
We should know their stories because their daily challenge was the daily challenge we still face—to walk with Jesus, to follow in his footsteps, to live his gospel in a culture that is hostile to religion and Christian values.
Archbishop Gomez comes back to the martyrs as a touchstone in his talk, highlighting how friendship with Jesus was at the center of their lives, and how that friendship was lived out where He lives – in the Church:
Do you have a good friendship with Jesus Christ? You must! But how? We come to know and to love Jesus by trying to live the way he did, by keeping his commandments, by going to church, by meeting him in the Eucharist, and in the Bible, and in prayer—by trying to grow in knowledge of his teaching and his way of life.
He encourages his listeners to discern their vocations, to be educated, to be apostles to their peers, to help build up the family – all with Christ at the center. He closes by returning to the place he began: recalling those early Spanish missionaries:
This is also my challenge and my prayer for you, my young friends! Today it is your turn! May you be courageous and upright—like Blessed Anacleto and the other saints who have given their life for Christ. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re too young to give your life to Christ, to be his disciple.
I want to leave you today with the story of the youngest of our new Mexican martyrs, Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio. At 13, Blessed Jose joined the resistance movement against the government’s repression of the faith. When he was captured, they tortured him, trying to get him to renounce his faith. He refused over and over again. Finally, they sheered the skin off the soles of his feet, and made him walk to the cemetery where they shot him dead.
While he was in jail, Blessed Jose wrote a very moving letter to his mother, trying to comfort her. “To die for God gives me joy,” he wrote, “I send greetings to my brothers and ask them to always follow the smallest wish of God” (Joan Cruz, Saintly Youth of Modern Times, 118).
In Christ, you are all brothers and sisters of Blessed Jose Sanchez and Blessed Anacleto, part of the communion of saints in the Americas. Today it is your turn—to be saints, to be the new evangelists.
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