“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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27 July: Saint Titus Brandsma
Born in Bolsward (The Netherlands) in 1881, Saint Titus Brandsma joined the Carmelite Order as a young man. Ordained a priest in 1905, he earned a doctorate in philosophy in Rome. He then taught in various schools in Holland and was named professor of philosophy as Rector Magnificus. He was noted for his constant availability to everyone. He was a professional journalist, and in 1935 he was appointed the ecclesiastical advisor to Catholic journalists. Both before and during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands he fought, faithful to the Gospel, against the spread of Nazi ideology and for the freedom of Catholic education and of the Catholic press. For this, he was arrested and sent to a succession of prisons and concentration camps where he brought comfort and peace to his fellow prisoners and did good even to his tormentors. In 1942, after much suffering and humiliation, he was killed at Dachau. He was beatified in 1985 and canonized by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022.
Novena to Our Lady of Mount Carmel 2022: Day 4
St. Titus Brandsma explains that when "the Holy Virgin gifted the Holy Scapular to the Order as the pledge of her special protection... the Netherlands already had a cloister" founded by St. Simon Stock himself.
Quote of the day: 21 July
There is no house where one does not wear the garment of Carmel
Quote of the day: 3 June
we had the happiness of going to com[muni]on
Quote of the day: 19 January
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.
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