Worker Jesus It is a parish in the Simancas neighborhood of Madrid, part of Gran San Blas, famous above all in other times for its social scene in which drugs and other scourges and sequels gave a restless and subversive tinge to their daily lives. When I was assigned to her for the eighties more than one qualified me the neighborhood comparing it to the Bronx in New York, wishing me good luck. Yes, it is true, there was everything.
But today is not about that. They took me out of there shortly after and I have made other pastoral trips for years to other places. Since 2009 I have stayed here again. This is nothing like back then. San Blas has been colonized by progress and has been transformed, in part, into a residential neighborhood. Street drugs, robberies and riots are no longer at street level. Rather it is a quiet neighborhood where people live at ease.
In the parish we collaborate five Dominican priests. Four eighty and up and the parish priest, also a Dominican, a Burmese in full life, with his 35 years capable of leading not only a parish but everything that is put in front of him. He is also capable of depleting any nearby shop of rice if he is hungry. I say this because the other day we had a argument over food. Not virulent but deep.
On Saturday, June 18, they beatified in Seville 27 Dominican martyrs of the civil war among which are those of Almagro, better known. One of the five friars said that he did not believe in that, because the conduct of many of them was not a model of anything and that he thought that there was a lot of foolishness and influence. He told us the case of Peñalver, of a superior who ordered the friars to stay in the convent and he escaped. All those who remained died and are already beatified in another previous batch, while he continued to live. There was a lot of silence at the table, a sign of little agreement.
I told him: so… what? What do you want to tell us with that? Simply that superior was not on the list, he was not designated, he had not been chosen to die this death for Jesus Christbut the others, yes. Martyrdom is a grace that God gives to whom he wants and how he wants. A hard grace to swallow but sovereign and free. Santo Domingo he sought it all his life and it was not given to him, while some humble friars in the 20th century, when the Order was not at its best, received it, perhaps without seeking it. They died out of hatred for faith in Jesus Christ. The least is her works. Perhaps they did not have great individual holiness, but they died with enormous ecclesial holiness. The Lord perhaps chose them as friars just for that death. Does it seem little to you? It was his charisma, his mystery, his grace.
Precisely one of the new Blesseds was the son of a woman from Tejerina, my town. Fernando de Pablos Fernandez. I know his family perfectly. There was always enough piety in her to make a martyr, but that is not the point. We are free. He, the martyr, was a good man who made the career of magisterium in the style of the time and had school owned in several surrounding towns. Being in these he felt called and entered the Dominican Order. Despite being prepared for higher studies, he wanted to continue as a cooperator, the so-called laity, all his life, a place that was then very humble. He could have done more brilliant deeds in life but he was reserved for something higher and different. Judging others by works is usurping the rights of God. He was shot for believing in Jesus Christ on August 10, 1936 in Almería at the age of sixty. He was buried in a mass grave without his remains being identified. His mother, aunt Angelahad already died but it would not have cost him much to understand the death of his son.
The next day I was happy in the transmission of the ceremony from the cathedral of Seville. Simply because God is God and his gifts are not for sale nor can anyone buy them. He gave glory to God because he gift of strength that he instills in his martyrs is the supreme testimony and of more quality than anything we can achieve with any other good work. This has always been said by the Church. None of the martyrs deserved it on personal merit or for any of their works, but it was given to them in a totally free way through the blood of Jesus Christ, who cannot be held accountable. They have beatified many martyrs of war whom we are not paying enough attention to because we still mix politics and daily life too much with a grace, the supreme of all, the culmination of the gift of strength and Where is a Christian most similar to Jesus Christ?. Our most serious defect is that from the theology of retribution we think that one is saved by his works and merits and not by the free blood of Jesus Christ.
This treatise comes in very handy for all of us. modesty because ours is to rationalize and give prominence to what is valued in this world. The great personalities, the great professors or preachers, those who have held important positions, those who initiated new currents of thought and have made boredom progress of the centuries to heights of greater brilliance. The same thing happens in art and even in spirituality. In times of great competition, like ours, the humble and sincere friar will always need a good dose of the Holy Spirit to praise God a lot because criticism will chill his heart. I have no doubt that they were prepared the days before he died with a profound action of the Spirit in their hearts; she has a habit of doing it.
Days later, when the echoes of the ceremony have almost passed, some of us at Jesús Obrero are still thinking about the matter. What is calling our attention the most is the comparison of these martyrs with Santo Domingo de Guzman. We see it as a theological case. Our tendency is to give much more resonance to everything in Santo Domingo than what a small and humble friar of the 20th century could do without special works to exhibit. Not even his martyrdom is considered his work and merit, while Santo Domingo’s is. Theologically, however, the problem is not at all clear.
The supreme act of charity occurs in martyrdom. It is too much to think that our martyrs were simply political victims of a time of turbulence without knowing anything, when many of them died forgiving and without physical counter-violence: like a lamb led to the slaughter. Were they chosen like the children killed by Herod in Bethlehem? How much awareness is necessary to be a witness for Christ? Who knows the depth of these martyrs especially in the last days and hours? Who can take away from the Holy Spirit the maximum leadership at those moments? We are in the dimension of faith. This is like the Church, either you believe in it or you don’t.
Santo Domingo de Guzmán sought the grace of martyrdom all his life but it was not granted to him; on the contrary, he died in bed surrounded by great affection and veneration. Dying with brothers is also an enormous grace, but not of the caliber of martyrdom. These poor and humble martyrs of the 20th century did not die in bed but between the train tracks, shot in the middle of the street, hunted like vermin in some shelter. They suffered the ridicule of the people like Christ himself and more than one agonized in the square, wounded and stripped, suffering the scorn and mockery of atheist cruelty. All this forgiving and proclaiming in the style of the time with the cry of: “Live Christ the King”.
I do not make these considerations, as you can imagine, to lower Santo Domingo but to exalt many close witnesses to Jesus Christ of our time. I do not take away an iota or a wisp of love from Santo Domingo, but we have no right to underestimate what we have so close. I am not saying of Santo Domingo alone, but of the entire Middle Ages. There are no witnesses of Jesus Christ in all of it like those of 36 in Spain. I value all the disciplines, scourges and hair shirts that resounded in medieval monasteries but I bow to the grace of the humble friar or nun who dies in the streets of Madrid or Guadalajara amidst the contempt of the crowd, like Christ himself on his ascent to Golgotha .