Reflection / Sean Gallagher

Beatified Polish family can inspire holiness in today’s Catholic families

God blesses his people through the saints with concrete examples of how they, with the help of grace, can also become saints in their daily lives.

There are thousands of individual holy men and women who inspire the faith of clergy, religious and lay Catholics from countless walks of life.

It wasn’t until 2015 that a married couple was canonized together. That year, Pope Francis declared saints Louis and Zelie Martin. They lived in France in the 19th century and were the parents of nine children, including St. Thérèse of Lisieux.

Last weekend, God blessed the Church with the first family to be beatified together. On Sept. 10, Cardinal Marcello Semeraro, prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints, declared the Ulma family of Markowa, Poland, as blessed during a Mass in the southeastern Polish town.

Jozef and Wiktoria Ulma, along with their children Stanislawa, Barbara, Wladyslaw, Franciszek, Antoni and Maria, were executed on March 24, 1944, by Nazi forces for sheltering members of three Jewish families.

Also included in the beatification was a seventh unnamed Ulma child. Wiktoria was seven months pregnant at the time of her martyrdom. A week after the family’s death when their corpses were exhumed for a more dignified burial than they had received from their executioners, the body of the seventh Ulma child, a boy, was found next to his mother. It is thought that Wiktoria went into labor around the time of her death.

According to the Catholic media outlet PillarCatholic.com, the Dicastery for the Causes of Saints issued a statement noting that, although the child did not receive the sacrament of baptism, he would be eligible for beatification because he had received a “baptism of blood.” This phrase is related to an ancient doctrine in which it is held that those who die for the faith before they can be baptized are considered to have received the fruits of baptism.

The Ulma family now stands as an outstanding example for Catholic families in the archdiocese and around the world of how they can live out their faith and become saints themselves.

The Ulma family’s love and respect for the dignity of neighboring Jewish families, powered by their Catholic faith, led them to give them shelter in the attic of their family home, even though they knew that they risked their lives in doing so.

Catholic families here and now are called by their faith to give of themselves in sacrificial service to one another and to others in need. They may not face the threat of death that confronted the Ulma family, but Catholic families in the U.S. today can be scorned by others in society and sometimes even face pressure from employers or government agencies for seeking to serve any number of people, from unborn children and mothers in need to undocumented immigrants.

In any case, mothers, fathers and children are called to die to themselves many times every day in the lives they share with each other. Knowing from my own experience as a husband and father how challenging this can be, having an example like the Ulma family can be a real source of encouragement to give of myself daily for my wife and sons.

In executing the Ulma family, the Nazis had hoped to instill such fear in the Poles of Markowa that they would refrain from protecting Jews of the area. They failed. Despite the dangers they faced, the people of Markowa continued to hide their Jewish brothers and sisters until the end of the war about a year later.

The powers that be in our world may believe, like the Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong once said, that power flows from the barrel of a gun.

But the Ulma family is a shining witness to the whole world that the greatest and most lasting revolution is fueled by self-giving love.

May God’s grace flow through the martyrdom of the Ulma family to empower Catholic families in central and southern Indiana to give of themselves in loving service to each other and to those in need beyond their family homes.
 

(Sean Gallagher is a reporter for The Criterion.) †