Saturday, September 9, 2023

Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

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?



[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/24024/number-of-victims-nazi-regime/

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