EASTER DAWN

 

EASTER BLESSINGS

DAWN  LOOKING EAST ACROSS MONASTERY PASTURES

PHOTO BY OUR NEIGHBOR NED GRIFFIN

ONLY RESTING!

 

So they took His body down
The Man who said He was the Resurrection and the Life
Was lifeless on the ground now
The sky was red His blood, along the blade of night

And as the Sabbath fell, they shrouded Him in linen
They dressed Him like a wound
The rich man and the women, they laid Him in the tomb

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord’s
In six He made the earth, and all the heavens
But He rested on the the seventh, God rested
He said that it was finished and the seventh day
He blessed it, God rested

So they laid their hopes away
They buried all their dreams
About the Kingdom He proclaimed
And they sealed them in the grave
As a holy silence fell on all Jerusalem

And the Pharisees were restless, Pilate had no peace
Peter’s heart was reckless, Mary couldn’t sleep
But God rested

Six days shall you labor, the seventh is the Lord’s
In six Hhe made the earth, and all the heavens,
But He rested on the the seventh, God rested
He worked till it was finished
And the seventh day He blessed it
He said that it was good, and the seventh day
He blessed it, God rested

The sun went down, the Sabbath faded
The holy day was done, and all Creation waited.

              Song by Andrew Peterson.

GOOD FRIDAY

 

GEZA GYORKE  artist was born in 1991 in Uzhhorod, Ukraine. At the age of five he entered the Uzhhorod Children's Art School. His teacher was a famous artist Emma Levadska. He also studied at A. Hromovy's studio. In 1997, for the first time he took part in the fine arts competition in memory of Zoltan Bakonyi and became one of three winners. Later he was a multiple winner of the national and international children competitions and festivals. Since 2001, he has been a member of the children and youth art association ‘Minor Louvre’.

 In 2014, he graduated from the Lviv National Academy of Arts (teachers in specialty were I. Shuisky, Ya. Shymyn, O. Maksymenko, L. Medved, M. Andrushchenko) and stayed here to continue his postgraduate studies and work as a teacher at the Monumental Painting Department.

 At the age of 9 he held his first personal exhibition (together with H. Lazarashvili) in Uzhhorod. Two years later he had the next exhibition ‘Silhouettes of Acoustics’ (2002) with participation of the sculptor V. Roman and the artist F. Semaniv. In 2004 and 2006, the following personal exhibitions in Uzhhorod took place.

 Since then, he has been a permanent participant of all-Ukrainian and international art exhibitions and Plein Airs (Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Uzhhorod, Kyiv (Ukraine).The artist's canvases are kept in collections of the Museum of Modern Ukrainian Art (Kyiv), Transcarpathian Regional Art Museum named after Joseph Bokshay, as well as in private collections in Ukraine and abroad.

EXAMPLE OF LOVE

 

After Jesus had washed their feet, He put his outer garment back on and returned to the table. “Do you understand what I have just done to you?” He asked. “I, your Lord and Teacher, have just washed your feet. You, then, should wash one another’s feet. I have set an example for you, so that you will do just what I have done for you.”

Art by one of my favorite artists: Sadao Watanabe (d. 1996)  Japan

THE "UNRULY" MARTYR

 

BL. KAROL HERMAN STEPIEN was born in 1910 in Lódz, Poland to Józef and Marianna Puch, poor working class farmers. Karol as a child was considered extremely intelligent but an unruly child.

He early felt a call to the priesthood, and at age 13 began studying at the Franciscan seminary in Lviv (in modern Ukraine). He joined the Franciscan Friars Minor Conventual in 1928 at Lodz-Lagiewniki, taking the name Herman and making his solemn profession in 1932.

His superiors did not see a monastic future for him. He was having educational problems and was advised to leave the order. However, Karol was stubborn and persevered.

Brother Herman continued his studies at the Pontifical University of Saint Bonaventure in Rome, Italy, and was ordained a priest in Rome in 1936. Father Herman continued his studies at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lvov, earning a Master's degree in Theology. He served as priest in Franciscan Shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows in Radomsko, Poland, then the church and Franciscan monastery of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Vilnius, Lithuania.

 In 1940 he was assigned to Piaršai (modern Belarus), assisting Blessed Józef Puchala (one of the 108 martyrs of WWII). The two worked to care first for the people who were being transported to Siberian work camps by the Russians, and then to concentration camps by Germans. 

When the Nazis invaded in 1943, Stepien decided to stay with his people. He declared: "Pastors cannot leave the believers!".

On July 19, 1943, the Nazis took Fathers Stępień, Puchala and their parishioners to a barn in Borowikowszczyzna (Belarus). Both priests were shot in the head. The barn was then set on fire.

The remains were later retrieved by local Catholics and buried in the parish church in Pierszaje, Poland. 

He was beatified June 13 1999 by Pope ST. Johnn Paul II with the other 107 martyrs of WWII.

His feast is July 18.

BOY SCOUT MARTYR

 

 

BL. STEFAN WINCENTY FRELICHOWSKI was born in 1913 in Chełmża Poland, the third of seven children to the baker Ludwik Frelichowski and Marta Olszewska. 

In 1923 he began his high school studies at Pelpin where in 1927 he was admitted into the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin. He joined the scouts the same year, later serving as the troop leader. After he graduated from high school he began studies to become a priest, remaining active in the scouts.

 During his education for the priesthood in Pelpin he was active in the temperance movement and collaborated with Caritas.

 He was ordained in 1937 in the Pelpin Cathedral from Bishop Stanisław Wojciech Okoniewski. He first served the bishop as an aide and then served as a priest in Pelpin and in Toruń before continuing his studies at the Lwów college.

 In Toruń he was responsible for the parish press and vicar of the Assumption parish church. In 1938 he became the leader of the Old Scouts and the chaplain of the scout district of Pomerania. He was known for his devotion to the Sacred Heart.   

 The Gestapo arrested him on 11 September 1939 along with all parish priests in his area. Most of them were released on 12 September, but he was one of those kept back in jail.  Most prabably because of his influence on youth.

On 18 October 1939 and he was imprisoned in the Fort VII camp on a temporary basis before being sent on 8 January 1940 with around 200 prisoners to another camp. On 10 January 1940 he was sent to the concentration camp at Stutthof and then later on 6 April to Grenzdorf and Sachsenhausen before being sent to Dachau as his final destination on 13 December 1940.

Bl. Stefan contracted typhus while tending to prisoners who had the disease and he also contracted pneumonia. He died on 23 February 1945 and his remains were lined in a white sheet decorated with flowers before he was cremated. But before that the prisoner Stanisław Bieniek made a death mask and a cast of the late priest's right hand.

He was beatified in 1999 in Torun, Poland by Pope St. John Paul.  His feast is February 23. He is the patron of Polish scouts.

SECRET ORDINATION

 

Many Catholic priests and seminarians were imprisoned in the Nazi prison camps, and many died of the intentionally harsh treatment they received. One of these was BLESSED KARL LEISNER, born in 1915 in Rees on the Lower Rhine. As a youth he was active in the Christian youth movement. After he finished his education, Bishop August Graf von Galen (beatified by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005) assigned him responsibility for the care of young Catholics in the diocese of Münster.

In 1934, he entered the seminary in Munich. An apostolic young seminarian, he tried to organize the Catholic students into groups for discussion and recreation. He would take teenagers on "camping" hikes to Belgium and Holland so that they could talk freely about the contrast between what Hitler was teaching and what the Church teaches. However, when the Nazis began to demand complete control over all German youth, Karl's efforts became less effectual.

The government  made Bl. Karl serve for six months in agricultural work service. Despite the Nazi ban on religious activities among his fellow farmers, he arranged ways for them to attend Sunday Mass. On discovering this, the Gestapo declared him a dangerous person. Searching his home, they made off with all his diaries and papers, and most of his books. Fortunately, they preserved all these documents, thus preserving data for a history of this young man's heroic life.

Shortly after his ordination, during a medical examination, the doctor told the new deacon that he had contracted tuberculosis. In those days, the sole treatment available for the disease was good food and fresh air. These were to be found at a sanatorium in St. Blasien in the Black Forest, where he was sent and began to recover. It was during his recovery that a fellow patient heard him criticize Hitler. That very day, the Gestapo arrested him as a political prisoner.  

Having then recovered partially, he was put into jail. Then he was sent to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, and later transferred to Dachau. His tuberculosis worsening, he was lodged in the infamous Dachau infirmary, where the patients were often selected for medical experiments. Only the help of fellow prisoners prevented Karl from being included in the “invalids’ transport” to Hartheim extermination clinic.

In mid-December 1944, Karl fulfilled his long-held desire when he was secretly ordained as a priest by the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Gabriel Piguet, who was also a prisoner in Dachau concentration camp, himself having been arrested for aiding Jewish children. (He was later declared Righteous Among the Nations for his charity). The ordination, carefully prepared by Catholic and Protestant clergymen, was a moving event.

The new priest was so ill afterwards, that he had to postpone his first Mass for a week. After that first Mass he never got to celebrate another. When the Allies liberated Dachau in April 1945, he was sent to a sanitarium, but he died a few weeks later of the rigors of disease and jail.

 When Pope St. John Paul II declared him a martyr, it was at a Mass celebrated in the vast stadium that Hitler had constructed for the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. In this arena, used so often for Nazi mega-spectacles, St. John Paul denounced the racism and the "absolute cruelty" that Nazism had so often demonstrated under the shadow of the swastika.  Bl. Karl's feast is August 12.

Statue: Kleve, N. Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

ALL IN THE NAME OF CHRIST JESUS

BLESSED JOZEF CEBULA was born into a modest family in 1902, at Malnia in southern Poland. He suffered tuberculosis as a youth. After an unexpected recovery, he visited an Oblate shrine where he shared his story with an Oblate priest. The priest advised Józef to study with the Oblates at the newly-established Oblate minor seminary.

At the age of 19 he entered the Congregation of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Following ordination to the Oblate priesthood in 1927, Father Józef spent the next ten years teaching Oblate seminarians. From 1931 on, he was the director of the minor seminary in Lubliniec. In 1937, he became novice master at Markowice where his humility and gentleness were noteworthy. During this time he was also active in the preaching ministry and was much sought after as a confessor.

 When the Nazis occupied Poland during the Second World War, they declared loyalty to the Church illegal. All Church associations were forbidden, and many priests were arrested. On May 4, 1940, the Oblate novices at Markowice were arrested by the Nazis and sent to the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany.

  Father Józef was forbidden to exercise his priestly ministry and obliged to work in the fields. But at night, the zealous priest celebrated the Eucharist and administered the sacraments in the surrounding villages, until he was arrested on April 2, 1941. He was taken to a concentration camp at Mauthausen in Austria.

Known for his humility, Bl. Józef was a man of quiet prayer with a deep spiritual life. He radiated peace in the very middle of the death camp, even when tormented by the Nazis. In Mauthausen he was harassed and forced to work hard, to break rocks in the quarry, simply because he was a Roman Catholic priest. He was forced to carry 60-pound rocks from the quarry to a camp two miles away. He had to climb the 186 "Death Stairs" while being beaten and insulted by his tormentors. *

The guards humiliated and mocked him by ordering him to sing the texts of the Mass while he worked. Three weeks later, Father Józef summoned up his strength and said, “It is not you who are in charge. God will judge you.” The Nazis ordered him to run, with a rock on his back, towards the camp’s barbed wire fence, where a guard shot him with a submachine gun and declared that Father Józef “was shot while trying to escape”. He died a martyr on May 9, 1941, in this volley of bullets. His body was taken to a crematorium and burned.

 

He was declared blessed by Pope John Paul II along with the other 107 martyrs of WWII. While there were so many in this group, and each story different, all gave their lives in the name of Jesus Christ.

*The Stairs of Death at Mauthausen concentration camp

Several times throughout the day, prisoners were forced to carry blocks of stone, often weighing as much as 60 pounds, up the 186 stairs of the so called "Stairs of Death". Often, exhausted prisoners would collapse and drop their load on top of those following, creating a horrific domino effect with prisoners falling onto the next, all the way down the stairs. The heavy stones would crush their limbs and bodies. People died on these stairs every day.

 Sometimes, the SS guards would force the exhausted prisoners to race up the stairs carrying blocks of stone. Those who survived the ordeal would then be placed in a line-up at the edge of a cliff, the SS called "The Parachutists Wall". At gun-point each prisoner would have the option of being shot or pushing the prisoner in front of him off the cliff. Some prisoners, unable to bear the tortures of the camp, would willfully jump off the cliff. Such suicides were frequent.

Today, the "Stairs of Death" form part of the guided tours at the Mauthausen Memorial. The stairs have been redone and straightened so that tourists can easily climb up and down them, but at that time they were tilted and slippery.

 

DOMINICAN PRINCE- MARTYR

 

Among the Polish 108 martyrs of WWII was a Polish prince. BLESSED JAN FRANCISZEK CZARTORYSK,was born in 1897 in in Pelkinie, near the town of Jarosław, southeastern Poland, into the noble Polish family of the Czartoryskis. After completing his secondary education, Jan took up studies at the the Lwów Polytechnic (today's Ukraine), one of the most prestigious centers of technical studies in prewar Poland and also in Central Europe. He graduated with a master's degree in engineering and architecture.

During the Bolshevik aggression against Poland in 1920, Jan along with many young volunteers took an active part in the heroic defence of the city of Lwów against the Red Army. His valiance and bravery earned him the Cross of Valour, a Polish military decoration awarded to those who distinguished themselves for deeds of valor and bravery on the battlefield.

In 1921 after the defeat of the Bolsheviks, Jan became one of the founders of the Catholic Youth Association called "Rebirth". But it was not politics that was to become his true calling. In 1926 he entered the higher clerical seminary in Lwów with a view to becoming a priest. Soon afterwards, however, he discovered a strong call to the consecrated life and joined the Dominican Order.

 He received his Dominican habit in 1927 and was ordained four years later. As a Dominican friar, he took the name of Michal. Father Michal fulfilled a number of functions such as Master of Brothers and then of Students. 

 Poland was hit by World War II, the cataclysm of apocalyptic proportions for the nation. On the 1st August 1944 Father Michal was fulfilling his ministry in Warsaw. He was on his way to an appointment with an eye doctor when the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation began.

 Eager to serve his homeland at all times, he joined the Insurgents as the chaplain to the Polish Home Army. While providing spiritual assistance to the badly wounded in a hospital besieged by the Germans, he rejected an offer to escape in civilian clothes along with the lightly wounded and the remaining medical personnel choosing to minister to the needy until the very end. He is reported to have said: "I won't take off my scapular nor will I desert the injured, completely helpless and bedridden."

Together with the injured insurgents, Father Michal was shot by the Germans on 6th September at about 2 pm. Their bodies were thrown on a barricade, saturated with petrol oil and set alight.

Father Michal Czartoryski was beatified by Pope John Paul II on 13th June 1999 alongside 107 other World War II martyrs. He is the Patron Saint of the town of Jarosław. Feast Day is September 6.

NOT KILLED BY STONES

In the mid 8os a neighbor of our Abbey in CT gave us each a photo of a newly martyred priest. She and her husband were Polish- he had been a general in the Polish army in WWII. The photo  was of a new “monument” erected on the spot where this young priest had been martyred.  The Communists wrongly thought that if they got rid of him, his words against them would fade away. The authorities were badly mistaken, as the death caused so much uprising it was the beginning of the end for Communism in this very Catholic country.  While the whole affair was disturbing at the time for us in the USA, it was too remote for me at the time to stir much in my heart.  Yet I still have that photo, some 40 years later.  (see “monument”  below).

BLESSED JERZY POPIELUSZKO was born in 1947, on a farm in the small village of Okopy located in North Eastern Poland. His parents Wladyslaw and Mariana were devout Catholics. Jerzy was a fragile child but he made up for any physical infirmities in strength of character.

It is important to understand the state of his country during his lifetime, in order to understand his death. Poland was  suffering from the aftermath of the reign of terror by the Nazi’s and the ongoing persecution of the Church by the Communists since the country’s occupation by the Russians in the Second World War.  Okopy, the geographical center or “heart” of Poland was a rural village and thus its school system was not as deeply infiltrated with the sociology of the communist regime, but nevertheless Jerzy suffered for his Faith.

Each morning before classes began Jerzy would walk three miles to serve Mass, and then after classes were over in the evening, would return to the Church to pray the Rosary. His spirituality was ridiculed and he was accused by his teacher of praying too much. (I remember when I was in the Czech Republic in the late 1980s, the friend I stayed with said they too suffered because of their faith, especially regarding employment.)

As a precaution Jerzy kept secret his intention to become a priest for fear that if it were known,  the results of his exams would be altered. After graduating high school in 1965 he headed for the seminary in Warsaw, chosen due to its closeness to the monastery of St Maximilian Kolbe, a favorite saint of his.

After one year of seminary training Jerzy was drafted into the military for a two year tour in a special unit for clerics in Bartoszyce.  The plan for drafting clerics into the service was to indoctrinate them with the communistic ideal and cause them to lose their vocation. In spite of bitter persecution ensuing from the practice of his Faith, Jerzy firmly defied the authority’s attempt to marginalize Catholicism.

On one occasion, when Jerzy refused to crush his rosary beneath his heel he was cruelly beaten and placed in solitary confinement for a month. Another time he refused to remove a medal from abound his neck, so was forced to stand for hours in the freezing rain. He was also made to crawl around the camp on his hands and knees as a punishment for saying the rosary.

This contributed to his already frail health, causing him to undergo a life threatening surgery to undo the damage done to his heart and kidneys from his beatings. The recovery caused his ordination to be delayed, but on May 28, 1972, he was ordained by Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the Primate of Poland who led the Church’s resistance to communism, beatified September 12, 2021.

After being ordained, he served at local parishes.  His sermons, famous for exhorting members of the faithful to resist Communism, were broadcast on Radio Free Europe. 

From December 13, 1981, to July 22, 1983, the Polish People's Republic imposed martial law in an effort to crush political opposition.  During that period, Father Jerzy continued to celebrate Mass in public places. Father Jerszy also organized a relief effort to help the families suffering from the loss of their jobs and livelihood as a result of defending the Faith, or the government having declared martial law.

The government grew more and more frustrated with Father Jerzy as more and more people flocked to him, and at the monthly Mass for the homeland, had guards stationed at every block corner to watch him. He went out of his way to be kind to these guards, calling them his “Guardian Angels” and even bringing them coffee in the cold Polish winter.

"An idea which needs rifles to survive dies of its own ­accord," he observed.  "It is not enough for a Christian to condemn evil, cowardice, lies, and use of force, hatred, and oppression.  He must at all times be a witness to and defender of justice, goodness, truth, freedom, and love.  He must never tire of claiming these values as a right both for himself and others."

In 1983, he was arrested on trumped-up charges, but members of the clergy intervened and he was soon released and granted amnesty.  He then emerged unscathed from a car "accident" on October 13, 1984, that had been staged by the state for the purpose of killing him. 

But on October 19, 1984, he was murdered by three agents of the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.  The thugs lured him by faking the breakdown of their vehicle and flagging him down for help.  They savagely beat him, tied him up, and shoved him in the trunk of their car.  They then bound a stone to his feet and dumped him into a nearby reservoir.  His body was recovered on October 30. The last public words spoke by Blessed Jerzy during the meditation on the rosary October 19, 1984:  In order to defeat evil with good, in order to preserve the dignity of man, one must not use violence. It is the person who has failed to win on the strength of his heart and his reason, who tries to win by force…Let us pray that we be free from fear and intimidation, but above all from the lusts for revenge and violence.”

"Truth, like justice," he once observed, "is connected to love, and love has a price." 

An uproar went up across Poland.  His funeral was attended by 250,000.  His martyrdom became a flash point for the anti-Communist resistance movement.  His assassins were subsequently tried and convicted of murder, as was the colonel who gave the order. 

He was buried in Saint Stanislaus Kostka Church, Warsaw, and in 2009 was posthumously awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian and military honor.

The rock used to kill him is now housed as a relic in San Bartolomeo all'Isola, the Shrine to the New Martyrs of the 20th and 21st centuries, in Rome.

He was beatified on June 6, 2010, by Archbishop Angelo Amato on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. His feast is October 19.

CARMELITES AT DACHAU

 BLESSED HILARY  JANUSZEWSKI was born in1907 in Krajenki, Poland and was given the name of Pawel. He received a Christian education from his parents, Martin and Marianne. He attended the college in Greblin (where his family lived from 1915), continuing his studies at the Institute of Suchary, but had to abandon these due to his family’s economic difficulties. He took up other studies and in 1927 entered the Order of Carmel.

Hilary was ordained priest on 15 July 1934. He obtained his lectorate in theology and the prize for the best students of the Roman Academy of St Thomas and in 1935 returned to Poland to the monastery in Kracow. On his return to Poland, he was appointed professor of Dogmatic Theology and Church History at the Institute of the Polish Province in Cracow.

 In 1939, he was appointed prior of the community, with Poland recently occupied by the Germans. One year later, these invaders decreed the arrest of many religious and priests.

 On 18 September 1940 the Gestapo deported four friars from the Carmel in Kracow. In December, when other friars were arrested, Father Hilary decided to present himself in exchange for an older and sick friar. He was sent to the prison of Montelupi (Kracow), then to the concentration camp of Sachsenchausen and in April 1941 to the concentration camp of Dachau.

Together with the other Carmelites, among whom was Blessed Titus Brandsma (previous Blog), he, encouraged others, praying and giving hope for a better tomorrow. When there was an outbreak of typhus in another barrack, 32 priests presented themselves to the authorities to help the sick. Father Hilary joined this group.

 He was heard to say “You know I will not come back from there, but they need us.” His apostolate lasted 21 days because, infected by typhus, he died on 25 March 1945, a few days before the liberation of the concentration camp. His body was cremated in the crematorium of Dachau.

Father Hilary Januszewski was beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II on 13 June 1999, during his apostolic visit to Warsaw (Poland) as part of the 108 Polish martyrs of the Second World War, victims of Nazi persecution.

SAINT OF DACHAU

 

Unlike our previous saints for Lent, ST. TITUS BRANDSMA was not Polish. He was born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma to Titus Brandsma and his wife Tjitsje Postma at Oegeklooster, near Hartwerd, in the Province of Friesland in 1881. His parents, who ran a small dairy farm, were devout and committed Catholics, a minority in a predominantly Calvinist region. With the exception of one daughter, all of their children (three daughters and two sons) entered religious orders.

 From age 11, the future saint was educated at a preparatory school for boys who were studying for the priesthood. He joined the Carmelite novitiate in 1898, taking the name Titus in honor of his father.

In the years following his 1905 ordination, he received a doctorate in philosophy and initiated a project to translate the works of St Teresa of Avila into Dutch. One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, he served as a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism at the school. While there he was known more for his availability to faculty and students than for his academic achievements. He later served as rector magnificus (1932–33).

 In 1935 he traveled for a lecture tour of the United States and Canada, speaking at various institutions of his order. On the occasion of his visit to a Carmelite seminary in Niagara Falls, Ontario, he wrote of the falls that "I not only see the riches of the nature of the water, its immeasurable potentiality; I see God working in the work of his hands and the manifestation of his love.”

 Working as a journalist, Father Brandsma served as ecclesiastical advisor to Catholic journalists. His long-standing opposition to Nazi ideology came to the attention of the Nazis when they invaded the Netherlands in 1940. In direct opposition to the Third Reich, the Conference of Dutch Bishops sent a letter ordering Catholic newspaper editors not to print Nazi propaganda. Father Brandsma was arrested while hand delivering the letter in January 1942. After being imprisoned in several other facilities, in June he was taken to the Dachau camp in Germany.

During his brief time at Dachau Father Brandsma was well-known for his kindness and spiritual support of other prisoners. His death on July 26, 1942 was a result of the Reich’s program of medical experimentation on prisoners. He gave a wooden rosary to the nurse who administered the fatal injection. She later became Catholic and testified to his holiness. In recent years St. Titus has been honored by both the cities of Nijmegen and Dachau. He was beatified in 1985, and canonized in 2022.

In 2005, St. Titus was chosen by the inhabitants of Nijmegen as the greatest citizen to have lived there. A memorial church dedicated to him now stands in the city.

 The saint’s studies on mysticism was the basis for the establishment in 1968 of the Titus Brandsma Institute in Nijmegen, dedicated to the study of spirituality. It is a collaboration between the Dutch Carmelite friars and Radboud University Nijmegen.

 In his biography of St. Titus, The Man behind the Myth, Dutch journalist Ton Crijnen claims that the saint's character consisted of some vanity, a short temper, extreme energy, political innocence, true charity, unpretentious piety, thorough decisiveness, and great personal courage.

His ideas were very much those of his own age and modern as well. He offset contemporary Catholicism's negative theological opinion about Judaism with a strong disaffection for any kind of antisemitism in Hitler's Germany.

A CHURCH OF MERCY IN WAR

During Lent I have presented martyrs who died at the hands of the Nazis in WWII, many were priests who refused to abandon their flocks.  Today we see the same situation in Ukraine, with priests who have stayed behind to care for the spiritual- and in many cases physical- needs of their people. The Church has become a symbol of concrete mercy. 

Due to the war in Ukraine, almost 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced from their homes. Almost 4 million have become internally displaced persons (IDPs), and another six million persons have taken refuge in another country, with Poland and Germany taking the lion’s share of those refugees.

Men between 18-60 had to remain in the country for possible deployment in the military, which means most of the refugees have been women, children and elderly. 

 The Church and many Catholic orders of religious men and women are still aiding refugees, physically and emotionally, as well as spiritually. Many feel the West has forgotten their plight as the war drags on and other tragedies take precedence in the news.

Ukrainian Father Oleksandr Zelinskyi of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and director of EWTN Ukraine since 2017, says that “hope is something that helps us carry on, to work, to live, believing that God can change even the worst for the good. And there are many people bearing witness that faith and trust in God helps them in these difficult times.”

Father Zelinskyi said the people are very grateful to all those in the world who continue to pray for Ukraine. He feels that the act of consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary carried out by Pope Francis in March 2022, “did some good, because after this consecration the Russians had to leave the Kiev region. And I believe it was possible thanks to the providence of God.”

We know from local friends that the Knights of Columbas are still supplying goods  to families in need through their Charity Convoy.  Over a million pounds of food has been delivered to Ukrainian families through this charitable mission. In Solidarity with Ukraine, an inspiring new film from the Knights of Columbus, gives a vivid example of what it means to be a Christian disciple in the midst of war, and how the light of the Gospel continues to shine in the darkness.

While we are unable to physically be present to the people of this war-torn country, who continue to amaze us by their strength and courage, we can pray, and daily we do!

BROTHER MARTYRS

 

BLESSED STEFAN GRELEWSKI born in 1899 in Dwikozy, Swietokrzyskie, Poland was the older brother of Blessed Kazimierz Grelewski. He studied at the Progimnazjum in Sandomierz and Lubartów in Poland.

 Ordained in October 1921 as a priest in the archdiocese of Radom, Poland, he graduated with a doctorate in canon law in Strasbourg, France in 1924. He then was general secretary of the Christian Workers Union in Radom in 1925.

 Writer and journalist, he published in “Kurier Warszawski”, “Nation’s Word”, “Catholic Guide” and “Priestly Athenaeum.” He founded the magazine Catholic Truth. He is the author of the book “Confessions and Religious Sects in Contemporary Poland”.and translated works from French and German to Polish.

He was prefect of a boy‘s elementary school from 1928 through 1931 and  of the Jan Kochanowski state boy‘s grammar school from 1932 until the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

He worked with the people of Catholic Action and the Association of Polish Intelligence, and helped organize the first diocesan Eucharistic Congress in Radom in 1933.

 During World War II, together with his brother Blessed Kazimierz (nine years younger) he taught religion in secret. Both were arrested in 1941as part of the Nazi persecutions and sent to concentration camps in Auschwitz and Dachau.

He died of starvation on 9 May 1941 in the camp hospital of Dachau. He was beatified with his brother in the group of 108 martyrs of World War II in 1999.

 

BLESSED KAZIMIERZ GRELEWSKI was the younger brother of Bl. Stefan. He was born 1907 in Dwikozy near Sandomierz. His parents were Michał and Eufrozyna née Jarzyna.

He graduated from primary school in the Wysokie Mountains and received his secondary school certificate after graduating from high school in Sandomierz. In 1923 he entered the Sandomierz Theological Seminary, and in August 1929 he was ordained a priest by Bishop Paweł Kubicki.

 He was head of the primary school, devoting thirteen years to this work, until his arrest in January 1941. During the war, he taught secret classes and conducted religion classes in public schools as well as devoting himself to charity work. He took care of an orphanage established for children - war victims. 

In January 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo along with his brother, Father  Stefan. He was taken to the prison on Kościuszki Street, where he was tortured,  transported to the prison in Skarżysko-Kamienna, and then by rail to the concentration camp in Oświęcim, where he received the number 10443.

In April 1941, he was transported to the Dachau camp (no. 25280), where he lost his brother. He then wrote to the family that Stefan died in his arms.

Witnesses of his anguish reported that one day in the Dachau camp "a kapo struck him and knocked him down to earth." Father Kazimierz rose, made a sign of the cross from the attacker and said: "God forgive you." After these words, the kapo attacked him, again  and shouted: "I will send you to your God in a moment." He  died on January 9, 1942 by hanging on the camp gallows, and at the last moment he called to the executioners: "Love God!