Carmelite wisdom to encourage & inspire
“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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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.
Right now, various ones are trying to find some way for me to be interned in a German priory of our Order... I have put the entire matter into the hands of St. Joseph who took the Virgin...
The Gospel spoke today about the love of enemies, that ability to reach out to those who persecute. Titus had that opportunity and lived it out so well. He had the ability to say, “You must love him, but perhaps not all the time, not all day, not at each moment.”
On the 14th my brother said goodbye to me before his departure for America. On All Souls Day, we will both remember our mother.
I deleted “smoking” from the daily timetable and the day went on
God will have the last word and will reward the faithful servant
He bore everything with patience and love
I do not want to curse anybody, nor take vengeance
I met Sister Teresia Benedicta a Cruce, known in the camp as Edith Stein, in the transit camp at Amersfoort
Countless have zealously given up their position, their property and even their life
He proclaimed human dignity and the freedom of the Church, even in the throes of degrading persecution and death
Père Jacques of Jesus offers this meditation on the virginity and maternity of Mary
I am quite all right in my solitude... God is near to me
Brandsma, a political prisoner, was arrested eight months before Edith Stein
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."
"Oh, that this day we might realize the value God has placed on the suffering He sends: He, the All-Good."
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Antonio Mas Arrondo
Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. ~ St. Teresa of Avila
Monasterio de las Batuecas Carmelitas Descalzos
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