On July 30, 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi camp in Poland. In retaliation, the commandant lined up inmates of cell block fourteen and ordered that ten of them be selected for death. When one of the ten cried that he would never see his family again, another prisoner stepped forward and volunteered to take his place. When the commandant asked who he was, he replied, “I am a Catholic priest.” His offer was accepted, and so Fr. Maximilian Kolbe assumed his place among the condemned.
Fr. Kolbe had entered the Franciscans at sixteen. Though a sickly youth, he was animated by pious zeal that was matched by a genius organization. After his ordination, he formed a movement called the Knights of Mary Immaculate and launched a series of journals, which achieved a circulation of eight hundred thousand in Poland. He also organized a community called City of the Immaculate, which grew to include 762 Conventuals friars, making it the largest religious community of men in the world. In the 1930s, he started a similar foundation in Japan.
He was back in Poland in 1939 when the Nazis invaded. Gauging the Nazis’ enmity for religion, he intuited his eventual fate and prepared himself for a long time suffering. “I would like to suffer and die in a knightly manner,” he stated, “even to the shedding of the last drop of my blood, to hasten the day of gaining the whole world for the Immaculate Mother of God.” He was arrested in February 1941, and by May he was on his way to Auschwitz. He survived three months of labor and horrendous suffering. But his final passion began in July when he and the other prisoners were locked in a death bunker with nothing to consume but their own urine. He passed the time leading his companions in prayer, preparing them for death, and keeping vigil with them as they gradually succumbed. When, after two weeks, Kolbe and three others were still alive, the Nazis dispatched them with injections of carbolic acid.
In 1982, Pope John Paul II, who as bishop of Krakow had often prayed at the site of Kolbe’s death, presided over his canonization in Rome. Present for the ceremony was the man whose life Kolbe had saved. The pope called Kolbe a true martyr and saint of our times whose heroic charity proved victorious over the architects of death.
The story of St. Clare of Assisi is inevitably linked with St. Francis, the one she called her Father, Planter, and Helper in the Service of Christ. It was Francis who gave her a vision and enabled her to define a way of life apart from the options offered her by society. But her goal in life was not to be a reflection of Francis but to be, like him, a reflection of Christ. “Christ is the way,” she said, “and Francis showed it to me.”
Like Francis, Clare belonged to one of the wealthy families of Assisi. Like every- one else in the town, she was aware of the remarkable spectacle that Francis had made in abandoning his respectable family and assuming the poverty of a beggar. Doubtless there were those in Assisi who respected Francis as a faithful Christian, just as there were others who believed he was a misguided fool. It was bad enough that a man of his background was tramping about the countryside, repairing aban- doned churches with his bare hands and ministering to the poor and sick. But within a few years, he had begun attracting some of the most distinguished young men of the town to follow him in his brotherhood.
She crept out a back door, slipped through the gates of Assisi, and made her way through the dark fields and olive groves…
What Clare’s family thought of all this is not known. But we know what impact it had on Clare. She heard Francis deliver a series of Lenten sermons in 1212, when she was eighteen. She arranged in stealth to meet with Francis and asked his help that she too might live “after the manner of the holy Gospel.” On the evening of Palm Sunday, while her family and all the town slept, she crept out a back door, slipped through the gates of Assisi, and made her way through the dark fields and olive groves to a rendezvous with Francis and his brothers at the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels. Before the altar, she put off her fine clothes and assumed a penitential habit, while Francis sheared off her long hair as a sign of her espousal to Christ.
It is tempting to read into this episode the romance of a spiritual elopement. To understand Clare, however we must realize that it was not Francis whom she rushed to meet in the night. He provided the meeting place, but her assignation was with Christ. Yet after Clare had taken the plunge of rejecting her family and her social station, it was not clear what the next step should be. Apparently neither Clare nor Francis had considered that far ahead. Although she wished to identify with Francis’s community, it was not seemly that she should live with the brothers. Francis arranged for her to spend the night in a nearby Benedictine convent.
Her family and a company of angry suitors tracked her down some days later in Holy Week. When pleading proved fruitless, they laid hands on her and tried to drag her out by force. She finally stopped them short by tearing off her veil and revealing her shorn head. They were too late. She was already “one of them.”
Francis had long intended that a community of women, corresponding to his fraternity, should be established. In Clare he had found the partner he was seeking. She was easily persuaded to found a women’s community, which was established at San Damiano. It required considerably more effort by Francis to persuade her to serve as abbess. Nevertheless, Clare quickly attracted other women. Over time, these included a number of her personal relatives, including her sister Catherine and even her widowed mother. Within her lifetime, additional communities were established elsewhere in Italy, France, and Germany. Among her surviving writings are a series of moving letters to St. Agnes of Prague, a young princess who joined the movement and became one of Clare’s most beloved daughters.
Unlike the friars, the Poor Ladies, as they were originally known, lived within an enclosure. But Clare shared Francis’s passionate commitment to “Lady Poverty.” For her this meant literal poverty and insecurity—not the luxurious “spiritual poverty” enjoyed by so many other convents, richly supported by gifts and endow- ments. To defend this “privilege of poverty,” Clare waged a continuous struggle against solicitous prelates who tried to mitigate her austerity. This was the center- piece of the rule she devised for her community. When the pope offered to absolve her from her rigorous vow of poverty, she answered, “Absolve me from my sins, Holy Father, but not from my wish to follow Christ.” Two days before her death in 1253, she enjoyed the grace of receiving from Rome a copy of her rule embellished with the approving seal of Pope Innocent IV. A notation on the original document notes that Clare, in tearful joy, covered the parchment with kisses.
It was Clare who urged him to go into the world: “God did not call you for yourself alone but also for the salvation of others.
It has been said that of all the followers of Francis, Clare was the most faithful. Many stories reflect the loving bonds of friendship between them and the trust that Francis placed in her wisdom and counsel. According to one story, Francis put the question to Clare whether he should preach or devote himself to prayer. It was Clare who urged him to go into the world: “God did not call you for yourself alone but also for the salvation of others.” When Francis received the stigmata, Clare thoughtfully made him soft slippers to cover his wounded feet. During a period of dejection, Francis camped out in a hut outside the convent at San Damiano. It was there that he composed the “Canticle of the Creatures,” his exultant hymn to the universe.
Finally, as Francis felt the approach of Sister Death, Clare too became seriously ill. She suffered terribly at the thought that they would not meet again in this life. Francis sent word that she should put aside all grief for she would surely see him again before her death. And so the promise was fulfilled, though not as she had wished. After Francis’s death, the brothers carried his body to San Damiano for the sisters to say their goodbyes. Thomas of Celano records that at the sight of Francis’s poor and lifeless body, Clare was “filled with grief and wept aloud.”
Francis was canonized a mere two years later. Clare lived on for another twenty- seven years. In her own final “Testament,” written near the end of her life, Clare makes only a discrete reference to the pain of their separation and what it meant to her: “We take note…of the frailty which we feared in ourselves after the death of our holy Father Francis. He was our pillar of strength and, after God, our one conso- lation and support. Thus time and again, we bound ourselves to our Lady, most Holy Poverty.”
As she lay dying at San Damiano, Clare offered her final blessing to the daughters gathered beside her: “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He show his face to you and be merciful to you. May He turn his countenance to you and give you peace.”
St. Clare died on August 11, 1253. She was canonized in 1255.
Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian peasant and devout Catholic, was executed for refusing to serve in Hitler’s army. He was known in his village of St. Radegund as a man of honesty and principle, devoted to his family and his faith, a sacristan in his parish church, who in 1940 had joined the Third Order of St. Francis. He was also known as a fervent opponent of the Nazis – the only member of his village to vote against the 1938 Anschluss that incorporated Austria into “Greater Germany.” Nevertheless, his singular act of resistance came as a surprise.
In 1943, when served with an induction notice, Franz turned himself in and announced his refusal to take a military oath. Before taking this stand he had sought counsel from his parish priest and even the local bishop. They had each advised him to do his duty and serve his Fatherland. But Franz believed the Nazis were a satanic movement and that any compromise would constitute a mortal sin.
In prison, he spurned ongoing appeals to save himself, convinced that he could not prolong his life at the price of his immortal soul. In this case, obedience to Christ meant disobedience to the state. But he took comfort in the knowledge that “not everything which the world considers a crime is a crime in the eyes of God. And I have every hope that I need not fear the eternal Judge because of this crime.”
Franz was beheaded on August 9, 1943. For years, his story was little known beyond his family and fellow villagers. In time, however, his story spread, and he was recognized as a heroic witness to conscience. His sacrifice, seemingly fruitless in his own time, would illuminate the path of generations to come. He was beatified in 2007 in a ceremony attended by his widow and surviving children.
Barbara Koob, who was born in Germany, immigrated with her family to the United States when she was less than two years old. At the port of entry, the family name became Cope. In 1862, Barbara entered the Third Order Regular of Franciscans and received her religious name, Sr. Marianne. Her early years were spent teaching in her order’s school and later serving as administrator of a hospital. In 1883, now the superior general of her congregation, she received a request from King Kalakaua in Hawaii for help in caring for leprosy patients. Though fifty other congregations had already declined the king’s plea, Mother Marianne responded at one:
“I am hungry for the work and I wish with all my heart to be one of the chosen Ones, whose privilege it will be to sacrifice themselves for the salvation of the souls of the poor Islanders.”
That year, she and six sisters sailed for Hawaii and immediately set to work establishing a hospital in Maui. Given the general fear of contagion and the social stigma attached to those suffering from Hansen’s disease, the sisters’ dedication to their patients won wide respect. Eventually, Mother Marianne consented to move to the island of Molokai, where the most serious cases were confined. There, one of her first tasks was to care for Fr. Damien de Veuster, the famous “Apostle to the Lepers,” who had succumbed to the disease during his long years of service. She embraced her work with joy: “Should I live a thousand years I could not in ever so small a degree thank Him for His gifts and blessings…I do not expect a high place in Heaven – I shall be thankful for a little corner where I may love God for all eternity.”
Apart from nursing her patients, Mother Marianne strove to create an atmosphere of beauty and peace. Planting flowers around the hospital, she transformed the barren landscape into a garden.
Mother Marianne died of natural causes on August 9, 1918. She was canonized in 2012.
Antonio Margil was born in Valencia, Spain. At a young age, he entered the Franciscans and adopted the nickname “Nothingness Itself,” by which he subsequently signed his letter. At twenty-five, after distinguishing himself as a preacher and theologian, he was ordained. Immediately, he volunteered to join the mission in New Spain.
Fr. Antonio spent many years as a missionary in Yucatan, Costa Rica and Guatemala. Always travelling on foot, he overcame the fears of the Indians by his poverty and simplicity, and his determination to dissociate himself from Spanish rule. For some time he interrupted his travels to preside over a missionary college in Zacatecas in Mexico, then travelled north to participate in missionary expedition to Texas. There he established six missions, including the mission of San Antonio. His reputation for holiness began to grow, fed by astonishment over his ability to traverse huge distances in no time, to read people’s souls and other miraculous signs. Above all, he was renowned for his charity. As he said,
“We must serve our neighbor more than ourselves, for by doing so we make Almighty God our debtor, and He will aid us in our necessities.”
Eventually he returned to Mexico, where he died on August 6, 1726. In 1836, Pope Gregory XVI issued a decree of his heroic virtues and he was declared venerable.
Solanus Casey, the son of Irish immigrants in Wisconsin, felt called to the priesthood after witnessing a drunken sailor stabbing a woman. Somehow, this scene of sin and suffering caused Casey to dedicate himself to God and to promote God’s love as the answer to the world’s troubles. After entering the Capuchins, he was ordained a priest. But in light of his academic difficulties, his superiors placed restrictions on his priestly faculties. He was not permitted to hear confessions or preach on doctrine. Instead he spent most of his life as a porter at St. Bonaventure’s monastery in Detroit and worked in the friars’ soup kitchen.
Despite his humble office, Casey’s extraordinary spiritual gifts were quickly recognized. A gifted reader of souls, he became particularly renowned for his ministry of healing prayer. Scores of people sought him out each day for spiritual counsel and intercession. Dutifully, he recorded their petitions in his prayer book and promised to ask God’s assistance. Even in his lifetime, hundreds of miraculous cures were attributed to his prayers. In his final illness, he remarked, “I’m offering my suffering that all might be one. If only I could see the conversion of the whole world.”
Since his death on July 31, 1957, at the age of eighty-six, the reports of healing miracles have continued unabated. In May 2017, one of these miracles was officially approved by Pope Francis, clearing the way for his beatification on November 18, 2017.
