July 7--The Blessed Ulma Family, Martyrs

The Ulma Family

The Church has beatified and canonized married couples, as well as members of the same family, but only one family has been beatified together as martyrs, the Blessed Ulma Family. Pope Francis spoke of them on the day of their beatification:

“Today in Markowa, Poland, the martyrs Józef and Wiktoria Ulma, and their seven children, were beatified: an entire family exterminated by the Nazis on 24 March 1944 for having given shelter to a number of persecuted Jews. They opposed the hatred and violence that characterized that time with evangelical love. May this Polish family, which represented a ray of light in the darkness of the Second World War, be for all of us a model to imitate in the zeal for goodness and service to those in need.…”

Jesus said: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn. 15:13). The Ulmas gave the ultimate sacrifice of love, their lives, in order to protect and save eight Jews. However, they were all denounced so that the lands of the Jewish family could be taken away. All were killed by immediate and summary execution as a sign to the Polish people to not hide Jews. The Jews were executed first, then, in front of their children, Józef and Wiktoria, who was pregnant, and finally the other six children aged eight, seven, six, four, three, and two. They were buried in front of their house, but later, relatives exhumed and reburied the bodies, including the unnamed infant boy, who was born during the execution.

This is a terrible and tragic story, except that it is not! True, the execution of both Jews and Catholics is horrific. But the love and sacrifice shown by such martyrdoms is heroic. Blessed Ulmas, pray for us!

July 27–St. Titus Brandsma, Priest, Religious, and Martyr

Sculpture Titus Brandsma by Gerard Mathot, Pieter Bondamplein, Nijmegen, the Netherlands licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

We need martyrs! “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians” according to Tertullian and also to St. John Paul II. The twentieth century was filled with martyrs in Mexico, Spain, Nazi-occupied Europe, Communist-controlled countries, and anti-Catholic dictatorships and governments. This has spilled into the twenty-first century as well. “Martyrs are revered with particular devotion by the People of God who see in them a living portrayal of Christ's Passion.”

Today’s saint was a “witness” (the meaning of the word martyr) to Jesus’ Passion in Nazi-occupied Netherlands. Born in 1881, St. Titus Brandsma grew up on a dairy farm and entered the Carmelite order in 1898. He was ordained a priest in 1905, received his doctorate, helped found the Catholic University of Nijmegen, and taught philosophy and history of mysticism there. He also became a journalist, which led to his arrest by the Nazis in 1942. He was hand-delivering a letter from the Dutch bishops to editors of Catholic newspaper editors to prohibit publishing official Nazi documents and was arrested and sent to Dachau where he was killed by an injection of carbolic acid. “In 1985, Pope St. John Paul II declared Titus Blessed, saying that he “‘answered hate with love.’"

We need martyrs to show that Jesus’ sacrifice of love is lived out in the lives and deaths of his faithful ones! We need martyrs to bolster the faith of our brothers and sisters in Christ! We need martyrs to convert the hearts of those who oppose, harass, torture, persecute, arrest, unjustly convict, and unjustly imprison and kill! We need martyrs to proclaim the truths of faith, hope, and love in Christ Jesus! We need martyrs to be “a life-giving sap of unity for the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ.” St. Titus Brandsma, pray for us.

August 9--St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Virgin and Martyr

Atheism has a hold on many in modern society on the grounds that immaterial things, like ideas and God, don’t exist; only material things, like bodies and matter, do. Atheism and materialism have many converts, including many scientists. They don’t seem to be able to deal with a reality that they can’t measure or perceive with their senses. Today’s saint, St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, born as Edith Stein, was one such atheist, as well as philosopher.

She was born in 1891 to a Jewish family in Germany. She became an atheist at age 14 and later a philosopher. However, her search for truth, and reading the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila, led her to convert to Catholicism. She taught in the universities in Germany until her Jewish heritage required her to step down. She became a Discalced Carmelite in 1933 and was sent to Holland in 1938 to escape Nazi oppression. Arrested in 1942 after the Dutch bishops condemned the Nazis, she was sent to Auschwitz where she was martyred along with her sister.

As a philosopher, she developed a proof for the existence of God based on the existence of human beings and our egos, which are dependent on the existence of a higher being, who is not dependent on any other being for existing. God is! We are because God is. But St. Teresa Benedicta did not die for a philosophical abstraction. Some claim that it is only because of her Jewish heritage that she was killed. However, her martyrdom was directly connected to the Dutch bishops’ condemnation of the immorality of the Nazis and thus, she is a true martyr. She died because she believed in a loving God who died for us. Atheism cannot comprehend such a love!

August 14—St. Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

St. Maximilian Kolbe was a martyr in the new age of martyrs, the 20^th century.  But as with all martyrs, St. Maximilian showed love, God’s love, in his martyrdom.  Imprisoned at Auschwitz, Fr. Kolbe volunteered to take the place of another prisoner chosen to be starved to death in retribution for an escape.  After two weeks with no food or water St. Maximilian was still alive when the other nine chosen to be killed with him had died.  He then was given an injection of carbolic acid, whereupon he entered into heavenly glory.

Some may say that the age of martyrs was over sixteen hundred years ago when the Romans killed men and women who stood up for their faith.  Actually, the 20^th century is THE age of the martyrs.  Blessed Pope John Paul II canonized or beatified 266 martyrs of that century.  The situations varied:  the Spanish Civil War, Communist persecution, the Mexican Revolution, Nazi occupation.  But each man, woman, or child died due to hatred of the faith or hatred of the Church.  Each also died forgiving those who persecuted them.

Blessed Pope John Paul II declared in Tertio Millennio Adveniente (On the Preparation for the Jubilee Year 2000) that, “At the end of the second millennium, the Church has once again become a Church of martyrs. The persecutions of believers —priests, Religious and laity—has caused a great sowing of martyrdom in different parts of the world. The witness to Christ borne even to the shedding of blood has become a common inheritance of Catholics, Orthodox, Anglicans and Protestants, as Pope Paul VI pointed out in his Homily for the Canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs” (37).

Martyrs are honored as witnesses to Christ, as those who love one another as Christ loved us, with their very lives.