[Coffee with the Saints]: Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio

It's been awhile since I did one of these, and instead of trying to come up with sweet information you might never have heard about a saint you've heard of, I thought I'd pick a saint that many people haven't heard of and introduce him to more people. Blessed Jose was born in 1913 in Mexico and died there at the age of only 15 in 1928. Here is his story as I understand it:

At the start of the 20th Century, the Catholics in Mexico were being heavily persecuted by the government. Calles, the Mexican president at the time, was a freemason and a devout atheist, and had issued a Constitution in 1917 which said that the Roman Catholic Church was to be persecuted. In response to this harsh persecution, a war broke out in 1926 where the Cristeros, a group of Catholic citizens, launched a revolution against this government in order to fight for the ability to practice their Catholic faith freely.

In 1926, when this started, Jose was still just a 13 year old boy. He had a desire at the time to go out and fight because he was a devout and on fire Catholic even at such a young age, but his family would not let him fight. One time, during the course of this war, Jose saw that the the army was desecrating the Eucharist, the very Body and Blood of Jesus which he held so dear, and he went out to protect it. Due to this, the army arrested him and one of his friends and threw them in jail because they were a part of this resistance.

This is where the story gets tough to read since it'll be graphic. I'm not doing that for the sake of being graphic, but because it's what happened, and it's powerful to see what this young man did in the face of such challenges.

While in jail, the army took Jose's friend and were going to kill him. Since they really wanted to get Jose to turn his back on his faith, they put a gun to his friend's head and told Jose that they would shoot his friend unless he yelled "Death to Christ the King, long live the government," and if he did his friend would live. The army did this because the battle cry of the cristeros, "Viva Cristo Rey" meant "Long live Christ the King" and they wanted to stop the power of this cry. Jose, in his amazing faith, smiled at his friend and said "prepare a spot for me in heaven, tell Christ the King that I will come to see Him soon."

After the army killed Jose's friend, they then turned their attention to him. After much torture, they decided that they knew the way to do it: [warning, graphic] they took the soles of Jose's feet and shaved them so that there was almost nothing left, and then they marched him through town, making him walk on the cobblestone streets. While walking on these streets, they continually offered Jose an out: say what we want you to say, and we'll carry you, we'll feed you, we'll take care of. When Jose continued to ignore them, they took him to a field, where they were going to kill him. With a gun to his head, they gave him one more chance. Instead of giving in, Jose made a cross in the dirt, kissed it, and shouted "Long live Christ the King! Long live Our Lady of Guadalupe!" They killed him.

It's hard to know how accurate all of these details are, but we know for a fact that this 15 year old boy witnessed to his faith and died as a martyr. We know that He is Blessed because the Church believes that he lived as a courageous and outstanding witness to the faith and that the Lord has rewarded him by allowing him to gain entrance into heaven. When we're faced with challenges and difficulties, let us look to the example of this boy, and saints like him, who at a young age faced extreme difficulty but refused to renounce their faith.

Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio, pray for us!

If you like this post (or think it's dumb) comment and let me know! This coffee with the saints is a series that I am doing to reflect on the lives of the saints; if you want to read more about it or see other saint posts, you can click the tab on the top of this page or click this link Saints.