I love learning about different saints and the ways they lived out their faith. Engelmar Unzeitig was born in Moravia, currently part of the Czech Republic, in 1911. At the age of 18 he entered the seminary of the Mariannhill Missionaries. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1939 and spent 1940 as parish priest in Austria. In 1941, he was arrested by the Gestapo police, being sent to the Dachau concentration camp. While in Dachau, he studied Russian in order to reach out to those prisoners at the concentration camp from Eastern Europe. In the autumn of 1944, he volunteered to help those prisoners who were sick from typhoid, a disease he contracted himself. He died on March 2, 1945. The other prisoners were very touched by his humility and his holiness. In 2016, Pope Francis declared him to be a martyr for the faith, which opened his way to beatification in that same year.
In the last several days in our Gospel readings at Mass, we have heard Jesus tell the disciples that they needed to be servants, observing how the scribes and Pharisees put an emphasis on glory and accolades. We also heard the story about the rich man and Lazarus, how the rich man did not recognize the suffering of Lazarus that was right before his eyes. Today’s Gospel presents a parable about rich landowner and the vineyard. Jesus sees himself as the stone which the builders had rejected, which has now become the cornerstone. People in society often ignore or reject others for different reasons. The saint we celebrate today, Engelmar Unzeitig, was imprisoned for being a Catholic priest. Jesus calls us to reach out to the least of our brothers and sisters, not to reject them. How are we doing so on our Lenten journey?
No comments:
Post a Comment