“What is the charge?” asked St. Titus Brandsma when the Gestapo came to arrest him on the evening of 19 January 1942. They searched his cell. As he was led away, he whispered to the friars, "Memento mei"—pray for me.
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Quote of the day, 18 January: Père Jacques de Jésus
Père Jacques says, “if we fail the test” of charity on judgment day, “we cannot begin all over again." On 18 January 1944, Jews he sheltered at his school were sent to Drancy before deportation to Auschwitz. Père Jacques lived the message he preached.
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20 August: Blessed Georg Häfner
From the time he was an altar boy, Georg Häfner was very close to the Carmelite nuns in Würzburg, where he joined the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites (OCDS), taking the name of Aloysius of the Most Blessed Sacrament. He sang his first Mass on 21st April 1924, having been ordained on 13th April of the same year. After having carried out pastoral work in various parishes, on 12th November 1934 he was appointed Pastor of the Oberschwarzach parish; during this period Hitler was coming to power. Häfner soon came into conflict with Hitler’s agents, since he would never use the typical Hitler salute, and always defended the doctrine and rights of the Church. He was arrested on 31st October 1941 and taken to the Dachau concentration camp on 12th December the same year. His letters from Dachau show his deep faith and his capacity to pardon his executioners. Finally, exhausted by illness and, above all, by hunger, he died on 20th August 1942.
20 August: Blessed Georg Häfner
I do not want to curse anybody, nor take vengeance
Quote of the day: 27 July
Countless have zealously given up their position, their property and even their life
After the August 2 arrest of St. Edith and her sister Rosa Stein, the police van drove them from the Carmel of Echt to the police headquarters in Roermond, Holland. Later the same day, they were transported to the Amersfoort transit camp, arriving after midnight August 3. Traveling in the same van with Edith and Rosa was Sister Judith Mendes da Costa, a Dominican nun who was an administrator in the Dominican sanitarium Berg en Bosch in Bilthoven, Holland.
"But I will accept whatever God arranges."
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