Marie du jour 2022, 10 May: Titus Brandsma

There was no holy card of the Virgin Mary in my breviary, yet her image is obligatory in the cell of every Carmelite; I had to find a solution for this. 

The volume of the breviary I have with me has a beautiful picture of Our Lady of Mount Carmel by Frein von Oer; since I didn’t want to tear it out, I simply opened the breviary on a little corner shelf above my bed to the left. 

When I am sitting at the table I only have to glance up in order to see her, and when I am in bed my glance falls directly on the Virgin with the star, “The Hope of All Carmelites.”

Titus Brandsma

Scheveningen Prison, 27 January 1942 (excerpt)

On Thursday 25 November 2021, Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to promulgate a series of Decrees including the recognition of a miracle attributed to Blessed Titus Brandsma, who was killed “in hatred of the faith” in the Dachau concentration camp in 1942. He will be canonized in Rome on Sunday, 15 May 2022.

Arribas O.Carm., M 2021, The Price of Truth: Titus Brandsma, Carmelite, Carmelite Media, Darien, Illinois.

Featured image: This photograph of soon-to-be Saint Titus Brandsma was taken in 1940 when he was age 59, but worn down by illness and the start of the Second World War. Titus was fighting health problems and was exhausted; in April 1940 he was in a clinic in Amsterdam. Due to the Nazi occupation, the Netherlands was under great pressure. The anxiety shows on his face. This photo is among many available in the press packet on the canonization website of the Carmelite Order (used with permission of the NCI, Nederlands Carmelitaans Instituut). If any of our readers have access to that image by Frein Von Oer, we would love to share it on our blog. A search for the artist on the Rijksmuseum website in Amsterdam proved fruitless.