Juan María de la Cruz, Master of Christian and Dehonian Life

On the occasion of the anniversary of the martyrdom of Blessed Juan María de la Cruz, SCJ (September 22), Fr. Juan José Arnaiz Ecker, SCJ, Superior of the Spanish Province, addressed a letter to the Dehonians of the Spanish Province, in which he invites reflection on the life and martyrdom of Blessed Juan María de la Cruz, whose 25ᵗʰ anniversary of beatification (March 11, 2026) and 90ᵗʰ anniversary of martyrdom (August 23) will be celebrated next year; and he urges further meditation on the importance of the memory of this Blessed Dehonian in personal spiritual life. The appeal contained in this letter deserves to be heard by the entire Dehonian family and, beyond it, by all Christians who are spiritually linked to Blessed Juan María de la Cruz, SCJ.

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Dear Brother,

Many say that history repeats itself. For my part, I believe that there is indeed a series of “ingredients” (political, social, religious, ideological, economic…) that regularly appear throughout the time we inhabit and call history. In 1936, these ingredients combined in a certain way, and in 2025, we observe with concern their reappearance: Russia–Ukraine, Israel–Gaza, terrorism, social programs, legislative agendas, populism, tariff policies, immigration, climate change, pandemics… The question remains: what combinations and mixtures do we make with them in the ovens of our daily lives? It is always a matter of seeing whether we have learned anything from the cruelties our ancestors endured.

Echoing the reminder that Fr. Pablo José Muñoz Zapirain, Provincial Delegate for the Causes of Beatification and Canonization, gave us in his letter of last September 15, Father Juan María de la Cruz will celebrate, on March 11, 2026, the 25ᵗʰ anniversary of his beatification and the 90ᵗʰ of his martyrdom, which occurred on August 23. These are not ordinary anniversaries! I believe that this vigil of his memory is a good moment for each of us to make a small assessment of the presence of the Blessed in the different spheres of our spiritual, community, and apostolic life. For example: what meaning does his figure have today in your Dehonian religious life and in your apostolic ministry?

Why ask this question? I asked myself this, helped by a recent reflection of the Archbishop of Oviedo on the martyrs of Asturias in 1934. And indeed…

• Blessed Juan María is a brother of ours who gave his life, even though he could have preserved it simply by remaining silent in that powder keg which was Valencia, in that unleashed madness on the square before the church of Saints John.
• Blessed Juan María is a brother of ours who was recognized for carrying out one of those gestures of supreme freedom that are possible only by the grace of God.
• Blessed Juan María is a brother of ours who was summarily condemned, without any legal guarantee, for an incomprehensible reason in which human justice has no competence: belief and religious practice.
• Blessed Juan María is a brother of ours who lived his own final scene, shared with thousands of others at that moment: an innocent life violently taken during his execution before the wall of the cemetery of Silla.

We all know, and we still see it live today (even if emotionally it seems almost like a film or fiction) on television, the growth of our capacity for cruelty, for objective hardness, for producing violence and tragedies.

But yesterday as today, there is a reason particular to the Christian whose life is violently taken. It is an attitude that is born of his faith: forgiveness towards those who did not forgive him. Just like Christ on the Cross.

The death inflicted upon Blessed Juan María de la Cruz out of hatred for the faith (in odium fidei), as with so many other martyrs of the 1930s of that terrible 20ᵗʰ century, was certainly the fruit of a terrible confusion, of a raging persecution, of a repression that wanted to present itself as promoting freedom. But these reasons are not sufficient to account for all that happened.

When the Church beatified each one of them, including Fr. Juan María de la Cruz, it did nothing other than proclaim “the beatitude of life that survives for eternity.” And that resounds as resurrection and as the Risen One! Indeed, Easter is subversive. It is infinitely more than resentment, a rewriting of history, an unjust oblivion, or a settling of scores. No. It is the recognition of a love latent and manifest. It is palpable and transmissible reconciliation. It is an opening to a reparative gratitude.

Yes, Blessed Juan María de la Cruz is a master of Christian life and, therefore, of Dehonian life.

This coming anniversary is for us an invitation to celebrate and to actualize the memory of him who died loving God, bearing witness to His beauty, and, following the example of the Lord Jesus, imploring God’s forgiveness and mercy for his executioners.

This anniversary is for us, for our communities and our works, an invitation to awaken and rekindle our faith, always at risk of falling asleep in comfortable mediocrity.

It is a call to place love (which goes as far as forgiveness, even in the face of the greatest offense, which is the attack against the very existence or identity of a person) and reconciliation (which restores in truth and justice, generating peace, all relationships) at the center of our religious life, lived with simplicity and boldness.

This belongs to our particular vocation and our state of life in and for the Church: to be eloquent witnesses of true love; to open fire (not with rifles or drones) so that, like a city on a mountain, we may be placed upon the lampstand of our time, united to the most ardent Light which is the Risen Christ (… risen from a violent death, but who lived in the excess of love, in reparation, in reconciliation, in redemption).

As the bishop already mentioned exclaims, next year we are invited to celebrate one of God’s paradoxes, this secret by which “a cursed misadventure becomes a blessed beatitude.”

[…]

He is our intercessor, the patron of vocations to our Dehonian way of life.
He is a lamp, small and hidden (it is for us to make his light grow and to make known his littleness), so that we may receive the light and the strength necessary to live and to announce with courage and humility the mystery of the Gospel: the Good News of Him who said and who says ecce venio; the mystery of the call to the truth of the sint unum lived in fraternity among us and with other men; the mystery of the ceaseless work so that His Kingdom may come, to which we contribute with integrity and faith.

Blessed Juan María de la Cruz is a martyr for one single reason: he died forgiving. To my knowledge, we have no written testimony of his last moments. But we know that he wrote with his blood the final page of his Christian, religious, and priestly life, according to the writing of the Lord, the one that, on the Cross, forgives His persecutors.

In celebrating his memory and placing ourselves under his intercession, would this not be a good moment to ask ourselves what place the Blessed occupies in our devotion? Would it be impossible to dream of visits or pilgrimages to Puente from the parishes entrusted to us or from our educational works? Is it not time to create a “Juanada” or to unite it, for example, with the “Javierada”? And you, more personally, what do you desire that this anniversary may sow in your heart? Tomorrow is a good day to give an answer. Simple; concrete; measurable; a committed answer, illuminated by that weakness that has become strength, that fragility that has become testimony in our brother.

Blessed Juan María de la Cruz,
intercede for us so that Jesus may send us His strength, His Spirit,
every day of our life, so that we may thus be faithful witnesses of joyful Hope,
day after day, step by step, word after word, silence after silence, gesture after gesture…
So that “Your Kingdom may come.”

Eternal Father, Lord Jesus, Spirit of Love,
united with your servant, Blessed Juan María de la Cruz,
we say to you today and always: “Here I am, O God, to do your will.”
Amen. Alleluia. Yes, you are coming soon. Come, Lord Jesus!

I wish you a joyful celebration of the memory of our Blessed,
always, in Corde Jesu,

Fr. Juan José Arnaiz Ecker, SCJ
Provincial Superior

Puente la Reina, September 21, 2025
On the eve of the memorial of Blessed Juan María de la Cruz, SCJ