Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sept. 10, 2023
Rom 13: 8-10
Villa Maria, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption,
Bronx
“The
commandments … are summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your
neighbor as yourself’” (Rom 13: 9).
There’s
at least 1 estimate that during the 12 years of the Third Reich—the Nazi regime
in Germany and the countries that Germany occupied during WWII—the Nazis
murdered 17 million people.[1] The number of those who were Jews is
generally estimated at 6 million. Other
victims were millions of civilians in the occupied countries, especially the
Soviet Union and Poland (including 2,000 Polish priests), Russian POWs, mentally
and physically handicapped people, homosexuals, German political opponents,
Gypsies, and others.
Among
all the countries ruled by the Nazis, only in Poland was the death penalty
imposed by law for hiding Jews.[2] Yet in a little village in southeast Poland called
Markowa, whose population today is only about 4,500, ten families took in 29 Jews and hid them between 1942 and 1944. They’d heard the Lord’s voice and had not
hardened their hearts (cf. Ps 95:8). 21
of those 29 Jews survived the war.
One of those families in Markowa was the Ulmas, Joseph, Victoria, and their 6 small children. Joseph was a gardener, beekeeper, silkworm breeder, and amateur photographer who left hundreds of family photos thru which we can observe their happy, ordinary lives. In the family Bible, he’d underlined the parable of the Good Samaritan. They took in 8 Jews.
The
family was denounced in March 1944. When
the German soldiers came on March 24, they immediately shot the 8 Jews who were
being sheltered, then led the Ulmas out of the house and shot them. Victoria was 9 months pregnant and gave birth
even as she was being murdered; that child too was killed.
Pope
Francis and the Vatican determined that all of the Ulmas had been killed for
performing a heroic act of charity. They
loved their neighbors so much that they risked their own lives, and they paid
the ultimate price for that. They were
Christian martyrs. Because of that, the
entire family, including all 7 children, is being beatified today in that
little village of Markowa. The 1st
reading at the beatification Mass comes from 2 Maccabees ch. 7, the story of
the martyrdom of a Jewish mother and her 7 sons when the Jews were being
persecuted by their Greek overlords in the 2d century B.C. Our Polish family is now the Blessed Ulma Family,
and their feast will be observed on the anniversary of Joseph and Victoria’s
marriage, July 7.
An
estimated 1,000 Poles were likewise executed for hiding Jews.
Compared
to such heroism, what can we do to love our neighbors as ourselves? How do we treat our own family members? the people who live next door? the people we work with or go to school
with? the people we meet on the street,
in the grocery store, in a park, at the beach?
How can we be more patient, more generous, more forgiving? How can we help someone who’s suffering from
illness, loneliness, grief, or some kind of hardship? Should we be protesting the religious
persecution going on in many parts of the world right now, e.g., in Nigeria, or
the discrimination that migrants and other minorities face in our time?
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