June 12

From 1939-1945, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, many Catholics, laypeople, religious, priests and bishops were killed because of hatred of the faith. On June 13, 1999, in Warsaw, Poland, Pope John Paul II beatified 108 martyrs. In the group of the martyrs there were seven Friars Minor Conventual of the Province of the Immaculate Conception in Poland: the priests Antonine Bajewski, Pius Bartosik, Innocent Wojciech Guz, Herman Stępień, Achilles Puchała and the religious brothers Boniface Zukowski and Timothy Troianowski. Five of them (Blessed Antonine, Pius, Innocent, Boniface and Timothy) had been with St. Maximilian Kolbe in the community of Niepokalanów. When St. Maximilian was arrested in 1941, he was Guardian and Blessed Pius Bartosik, Vicar. Blessed Herman and Achilles were working in the parish ministry at Iwieniec and Pierszaje (Belarus), where they were killed in 1943.

A sign of the truth of Christian love, ageless but especially powerful today, is the memory of the martyrs. Their witness must not be forgotten. They are the ones who have proclaimed the Gospel by giving their lives for love. The martyr, especially in our own days, is a sign of that greater love which sums up all other values. The martyr’s life reflects the extraordinary words uttered by Christ on the Cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Lk 23:34). The believer who has seriously pondered his Christian vocation, including what Revelation has to say about the possibility of martyrdom, cannot exclude it from his own life’s horizon. The two thousand years since the birth of Christ are marked by the ever-present witness of the martyrs.

This century now drawing to a close has known very many martyrs, especially because of Nazism, Communism, and racial or tribal conflicts. People from every sector of society have suffered for their faith, paying with their blood for their fidelity to Christ and the Church, or courageously facing interminable years of imprisonment and privations of every kind because they refused to yield to an ideology which had become a pitiless dictatorial regime. From the psychological point of view, martyrdom is the most eloquent proof of the truth of the faith, for faith can give a human face even to the most violent of deaths and show its beauty even in the midst of the most atrocious persecutions.

Filled with grace during the coming Jubilee year, we shall be able with new strength to raise the hymn of thanksgiving to the Father, singing: Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus. Yes, this is the host of those who “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). For this reason the Church in every corner of the earth must remain anchored in the testimony of the martyrs and jealously guard their memory. May the People of God, confirmed in faith by the example of these true champions of every age, language and nation, cross with full confidence the threshold of the Third Millennium. In the hearts of the faithful, may admiration for their martyrdom be matched by the desire to follow their example, with God’s grace, should circumstances require it.