I recently received early Christmas presents.
They arrived in my mail last Tuesday, Dec. 7: third-class relic of Saint Rafael Arnaiz Baron (April 9, 1911 – April 26, 1938) of the Trappists, and Blessed Titus Brandsma (Feb. 23, 1881 – July 26, 1942) of the Carmelites.
A third-class relic is the easiest “take-home relic” since it normally consists of a strip of cloth touched to the body part of a saint or blessed. (A first-class relic is composed of body parts and a second-class relic is an object used by the canonized or beatified.)
I would like to thank the superior of the Abbey of San Isidro Dueñas in Palencia, Spain, Fr. Enrique Trigeros, for graciously replying to my e-mail request and mailing Saint Rafael’s relic. Thank you also to Monique Jacobs, secretary of the Dutch province of the Carmelites, for sending Blessed Titus’ relic.
A Spanish priest introduced me to Saint Rafael a couple of years ago. The saint piqued my interest because he belonged to the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance or Trappist monks and nuns, who have an abbey in Jordan town, Guimaras Island that I twice visited.
Arguably the most famous Trappist before Saint Rafael’s canonization was the late priest, convert to Catholicism, and genius of an essayist and poet Thomas Merton, who continues to attract to the faith and to monasticism in particular the readers of his monumental autobiography “The Seven Storey Mountain.”
But pilgrims of all ages were made aware of more channels to God in the writings, paintings and sketches of Rafael. The architect-turned-mystic who deeply loved Jesus and Mary in a monastic life plagued by diabetes was sainted by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009.
A novena to Saint Rafael can be found in the Internet. It carries excerpts of meditations that he wrote as an oblate in the Abbey of San Isidro Dueñas.
“How great is God!” he once wrote. “The Lord has given me to you as a brother, and you to me as a soul to help practice this charity that Jesus taught us: ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’
“What a great consolation, to see one’s self loved by Christ and in Christ, above all when we are distress, and the Lord tries us! With immense tenderness, kiss the blessed hand of God, who gives health when He wants and takes it away when He pleases.”
Saint Rafael is a patron of diabetes sufferers and the youth. He was declared a patron of young people by Pope John Paul II in time for the IV World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 1989 and by Pope Benedict XVI in the runup to the XXVI World Youth Day in Madrid in the same country last August.
I first knew about Blessed Titus Brandsma in Saint Mary’s High School in Dubai, United Arab Emirates in 1996. We were required to write about a modern saint or blessed to complete fifth year Bible class under a British secondary education curriculum.
The pinnacle of Blessed Titus’ life as a Carmelite priest, writer and professor of philosophy was his vigorous opposition to the Nazis in the Netherlands during World War II.
The Nazis arrested him in January 1942 after he tried to dissuade Dutch Catholic newspapers from printing Nazi propaganda, and slammed Nazi anti-Semitism in a pastoral letter adopted by the country’s bishops.
In retaliation, Adolf Hitler’s minions deported from the Netherlands at least 3,000 Jewish converts to Catholicism. Blessed Titus was moved to the Dachau concentration camp in Germany on June 13, 1942. On July 26, a doctor of the German SS administered lethal injection to him. Blessed Titus gave the doctor a rosary before he breathed his last.
Blessed Titus is the patron saint of Catholic journalists. Every two years, the Order of Carmelites in the Philippines hands out the Titus Brandsma Award in Leadership for Journalism to deserving media practitioners.
When he was still alive, in prison, Blessed Titus wrote a poem to God while looking at a picture of Jesus. The poem in part reads:
“All trouble is a white-lit joy/ That lights my darkest day;/ Thy love has turned to brightest light/ This night-like way.
“If I have Thee alone,/ the hours will bless/ With still, cold hands of love/ My utter loneliness.
“Stay with me Jesus, Only stay;/ I shall not fear/ If, reaching out my hand,/ I feel Thee near.”