BLESSED
JOSEPH KOWALSKI AND THE 5 YOUNG
POLISH MARTYRS FROM THE ORATORY AT
NOTE: We celebrate this occasion on Thursday of this week - the following material has been taken from the new SDB portal in Rome (www.sdb.org) and you can also go there to obtain a brief life of the five young men).
Five youths from
They offer some common
features: the five were Oratory
members, all of them knowingly involved in their own human and Christian growth,
all of them involved in animating their companions, bound to one another by
interests as well as social and personal projects, and all taken together by
surprise and imprisoned in various places but for a short period of time. They were for a time imprisoned together
and all faced martyrdom on the same day and in the same way. The friendship of the Oratory remained
alive until that final moment.
The presence together of
these youths and Fr. Kowalski in a single beatification is
significant: young people evangelized
by us, involved together in the apostolate, following us to the point of
martyrdom and being raised to the honour of the altar together with their
educators.
While together in
imprisonment and death, each of them however has his own biography that is
intertwined with that of the others in their belonging to a Salesian
environment. Singly, and as a group, these youths let us
see the formative strength of the Oratory experience when it is able to rely
on an environment, on a youthful shared community, on personalized proposals and
where there are one or more confreres able to accompany young people on the way
of faith and grace. The five young
men came from Christian families.
With this as the foundation, the life and programmes of the Oratory
stimulated their generosity towards the Lord, their human maturity, their prayer
and apostolic engagement.
The group, as a place of
growth and engagement, was decisive. They will always be known as the group
of ‘five’. It is moving to read of
each: “He took part in the leadership of the Oratory, bound tightly by bonds of
friendship and aspiration to high Christian ideals with the other
four.”
The Oratory experience
produced a youthful solidarity between them based on
ideals and projects – a solidarity manifested in sincere sharing, in mutual
support in overcoming trials, in spontaneity and in joy.
This friendship encouraged
them to continue their gatherings when the occupation forces took over the
Oratory, leaving the Salesian only two rooms, and transforming the entire
building and the Church into a military barracks. In one room, and with a piano that the
brothers of the Sacred Heart put at their disposal, they continued with choral
activities and friendly gatherings.
Later, deprived even of this possibility, the places for gathering became
the small parks around the city, the fields near the river and the nearby
woods. No wonder that the police
identified them or confused them with those who entered into clandestine
associations. Friendship became
their mutual support during the passage through their various incarcerations
until their death.
PRISON AND
MARTYRDOM
All five were taken into
custody in September of 1940, Edward Kazmierski right at his workplace, without
the possibility of taking leave of his loved ones. That was Sunday. The evening of Monday 23rd,
at curfew and scarcely having arrived home, it was Francis’s turn. The other three were taken from home and
mostly at dead of night, from amongst their families. They found themselves in the Poznan Fort
VII. They went on first to the
prison at Neukoln, near Berlin, then to prison in Zwikau, Saxony, underwent
interrogation and torture and were sentenced to hard
labour,
We are able to follow their
trail through the different prisons thanks to the precious little notes they
found ways to write. These contain
short sentences but enough to provide a glimmer into the events in prison and to
reveal to us that here we are dealing with spiritual giants. “Only God knows how much we suffer. Prayer has been our only help in the
abyss of days and nights.” And in
another note: “God gave us the cross; he is also giving us the strength to carry
it.” As it was for Fr. Kowalski, so
for these five young men – there is a moving turn of events to do with the
rosary. When they were taken into
custody they had been deprived of everything they carried on them. Their rosary beads were thrown into the
rubbish bin. Just at that point
they took advantage of a moment of distraction on the part of their jailors and
courageously retrieved their rosary beads that gave them such precious comfort
during the most difficult moments.
Before they died, they were able to write to their parents.
Reading their final
sentiments leaves us standing speechless before such grand stature: “Do not
cry. We are happy.” Today they are ‘blessed’. To our three young people: St. Dominic
Savio, Blessed Laura Vicuña and Venerable Zefferino Namancurá, these five young
martyrs are now added, as if the saintly typology has now been completed with
its missing element: martyrdom. For
us it bespeaks all the meaningfulness of such first fruits in the youth
scene. In them we want to see a
model for so many young people suffering because of their Christian faith in not
a few parts of the world. We point
to them as intercessors as well as for their ideals of more demanding
values.