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LI_Catholic
Guest
I just finished reading an incredible book, “Priestblock 25487: A Memoir of Dachau”, by Fr. Jean Bernard. It is the harrowing story of a Catholic priest’s survival in a Nazi concentration camp.
Apart from being horrified by the brutality of the camp, I was deeply moved by Fr. Bernard’s descriptions of the extraordinarily daring risks the prisoners took just to pray and the indescribable joy they felt on those rare occasions when a tiny fraction of a Host was smuggled into the camp with a new “arrival”.
In addition to the standard treatment of beatings, starvation, forced labor, etc, they risked what Fr. Bernard called “the tree”; a particularly brutal custom wherein priests found “guilty” of committing any trumped up offense would be handcuffed, and then raised up by their arms from behind and hung on a peg.
They risked all this for a few brief moments of prayer or an almost invisible particle of a Host.
The book made me pause to think about the Christians of today in many middle eastern countries who face daily threats of violence and death for the simple act of possessing a bible.
Finally, I reflected on the half empty church I recently attended in my home town in New York; empty simply because it was raining outside.
How many of us cannot bring ourselves to “sacrifice” a few moments of our convenient, comfortable lives to worship our Lord, while so many risk their entire lives? And the excuses we serve up as rationalizations; bad weather, sports games, a slight cold, tight schedules.
How many of us would “suffer” through an hour of traffic to attend Mass? Yet, there are untold numbers of people in the world who would (and have) gladly suffer far worse fates for an opportunity to receive and worship our Lord in Word and Sacrament.
Yet He still loves us! Amazing.
Apart from being horrified by the brutality of the camp, I was deeply moved by Fr. Bernard’s descriptions of the extraordinarily daring risks the prisoners took just to pray and the indescribable joy they felt on those rare occasions when a tiny fraction of a Host was smuggled into the camp with a new “arrival”.
In addition to the standard treatment of beatings, starvation, forced labor, etc, they risked what Fr. Bernard called “the tree”; a particularly brutal custom wherein priests found “guilty” of committing any trumped up offense would be handcuffed, and then raised up by their arms from behind and hung on a peg.
They risked all this for a few brief moments of prayer or an almost invisible particle of a Host.
The book made me pause to think about the Christians of today in many middle eastern countries who face daily threats of violence and death for the simple act of possessing a bible.
Finally, I reflected on the half empty church I recently attended in my home town in New York; empty simply because it was raining outside.
How many of us cannot bring ourselves to “sacrifice” a few moments of our convenient, comfortable lives to worship our Lord, while so many risk their entire lives? And the excuses we serve up as rationalizations; bad weather, sports games, a slight cold, tight schedules.
How many of us would “suffer” through an hour of traffic to attend Mass? Yet, there are untold numbers of people in the world who would (and have) gladly suffer far worse fates for an opportunity to receive and worship our Lord in Word and Sacrament.
Yet He still loves us! Amazing.