“The one who wants to win the world for Christ, must have the courage to come in conflict with it.”1
St. Titus Brandsma
Backdrop to Today’s Blog Post:
A favourite gift from this past Christmas was a small paperback volume (under 200 pages!) titled, Saint Edith Stein: A Spiritual Portrait, from Pauline Books & Media by Dianne Marie Traflet. It traces the spiritual growth of this Jewish daughter, born on the Jewish Day of Atonement in 1891, in Breslau, Germany. She was the last of 11 children, and by her teens had already rejected her family’s spiritual heritage and embraced atheism.
A brilliant, renowned scholar and philosopher of her day, she subsequently embraced the Christian faith, becoming a Roman Catholic, and a nun. Stein died in the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz in 1942. Her crime? Being Jewish, of course.2 Sincerely converting to Catholicism, and entering the religious life, could not protect her from the wicked plans of evil men to eliminate the Chosen People of God.
Among other victims of the Nazi concentration camps, who have achieved the status of sainthood, are the Polish priest, St. Maximillian Kolbe, and a Dutch priest, Fr. Titus Brandsma, who was elevated to sainthood on May 15, 2022. As a Carmelite Friar, he was in good company. It is the Order of St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Therese of Lisieux, and, yes, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross…otherwise known as St. Edith Stein.
Franciscan Media says of St. Titus Brandsma,
During his brief time at Dachau Fr. 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.3
It also adds the comment, in regard to St. Titus, “Conscience often creates martyrs. That was the case for Titus Brandsma. Many people ‘go along to get along,’ not realizing that by doing so they are destroying themselves internally.”
Reflecting on the lives, and the times, of these two particular Saints, triggered the thoughts that follow. It gives me pause to wonder, as we enter this new year, if we need to look more closely at what’s happening today, and how our times compare to theirs. How do you see it?
Thoughts on entering 2023…January 1, 2023
TODAY…the beginning of a New Year, on the cusp of things we know not of, or can barely imagine, might befall us, in our modern, civilized, Western culture. I foresee it will be so like what was to befall Europe, unbeknownst to anyone but those in the highest echelons of power and authority, who knew already what they purposed and planned, as the world careened into pre-WWII in Germany, which would engulf it, and its neighboring nations. All were about to be caught up in the maelstrom of madness proliferated in the minds of men with evil intent, focused on the annihilation of the Lord’s Chosen ones…to continue and further the hatred against them, which began when the Lord called Abraham, and set apart his seed to be a holy people, consecrated in covenant relationship to the One True God, for all eternity.
Hatred of Jews, hatred of Jesus Christ, hatred of all those called to be uniquely separated and consecrated to the Living God, in the Name of His Only Begotten Son, still awaits us, as men with the same evil intent of those who plotted the destruction of Jews, through the millennia, are once again in the ascendency. With the same evil intent, they now plot the destruction of Christ and His Church, to establish their godless purposes to, themselves, ‘be like gods,’ in their own hearts and minds…to reign over and supplant godly men and women who believe that God is God, and there is no other. (Dt. 4:39; Is.46:9)
While we who believe know their efforts are doomed to fail, the chaos and strife they will engender is about to engulf people of all stations and status, of belief and unbelief, of all stripes. All, together, will be caught up in conflict that sets families at odds, drives division between friends and neighbors, rips asunder communities, parishes, countries, and nations. None will remain untouched or unscathed. Such will be the lot of those alive today as they watch civilization teeter on the edge of anarchy and destruction that they, falsely, believed could never happen, in their day and age, ever again.
The lessons of the past, from more than 75 years ago, have not been well learned, nor taken to heart, as they might have been. To displace God is to displace civility, genuine respect and regard, care and concern, for one another. Those things that form the foundation of ‘taking care of your fellow-man,’ to quote my un-saintly, deceased father who passed to his reward more than two decades ago. He was a man who sought peace among people and nations that could not be found in his atheism or communism, because that peace is only available in the personal surrender of hearts and lives to live for, and embrace, the reality of ‘knowing the One True God, and Jesus Christ, whom (he) has sent.’ (Jn. 17:3)
This was the ‘Truth’ that Edith Stein discovered that gave her the grace to face incarceration in a Nazi concentration camp, and the gas chambers, with equanimity. The same was true for Fr. Titus Brandsma who died from a lethal injection, as part of the human experimentation on the living practiced by Nazi medical personnel. As Canadians, with the legalization of Medical Aid in Dying, we might want to pause and wonder where it is leading when medical professionals become acclimatized to the thought of putting patients to death and normalize the death dealing in their own hearts and minds. Will healthcare continue to be life-saving, or is it destined to become more death-dealing, based on the beliefs of the current political leaders who form our government?
Only in serving the Living God, bending the knee, and bowing the head, declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord, will the peace the world seeks come to reign in the hearts of men and of nations.
I close with an observation by St. Titus Brandsma,
Among the many questions which I ask myself, none occupies me more than the riddle, that the evolving human being, proud and spirited in his progress, turns away from God in such great number.
It is disconcerting that in our time of such great progress in various areas, we face, like an infectious disease, an insidiously spreading violation and denial of God.
Why is the image of God so obscured that so many are no longer moved by it? Is the failure only on their side? Or is there something asked of us to make it shine brightly again over the world and might we hope that a study of the concept of God will at least alleviate this greatest of all needs?….
Despite the great progress in many areas, the human mind must be terribly dazzled that it no longer has the capacity to see God. This obstruction of vision, however, is not a total blindness. And without ignoring that this defective vision results from an ailing mentality which has clouded the eye, I ask myself if the object to be viewed is placed sufficiently in the light and whether we should not try to illuminate and place it so that even, through this ailing defective vision, it will be seen again?5
I think, that in today’s modern world, the ideas espoused above, still hold true as much as they did back in the day when St. Titus first voiced his concern. Are we the ones called to try to illuminate the Gospel truths so that they will be seen again…at the risk of our freedom…or our very lives?
Footnotes:
1 https://olmlaycarmelites.org/quote/titus-brandsma
2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edith_Stein
3 https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-titus-brandsma/
4 Ibid.
Ending Our Life Well 