Brief description:
During the Spanish Civil War, St. Josemaría Escrivá was on the run from the Communists. On August 28, 1936, he hid in the third-floor apartment of a man named Manuel and one of Manuel’s maternal relatives. The troops began searching from the ground floor up and the three men moved up to the rooftop and hid. As the troops neared, St. Josemaría told the relative, “I am a priest. If you wish, you can make a perfect contrition and your sins will be forgiven.” As the relative later recalled, revealing his priestly office was very courageous, for had the troops found them, he could have sold out St. Josemaría to save his own life. St. Josemaría began praying to his guardian angel, encouraged the other two men to do so too, and forgave their sins. They asked, “What will happen if they find and kill us?” He replied, “Then you will go to heaven.” The footsteps neared the door they were hiding behind, then stopped, and turned around. Of all the doors of the apartment, the soldiers neglected to search the one hiding the three men! At another time, St. Josemaría learned that his friend Fr. Pedro had been killed and he wept. Before the war, they had discussed the possibility of being martyred and had agreed that whichever one was martyred first would pray for the other in heaven. A few days before his death, Fr. Pedro said, “Now is the time to study the lives of the early Christians, to know how they worked amidst persecution, obeyed the Church, proclaimed Jesus Christ, prepared for martyrdom, forgave their persecutors. Fr. Pedro was canonized in 2003. Starting from October 1936, St. Josemaría hid in an insane asylum for five months.
English
繁體中文
