Terrence Malick’s meditative and beautiful film about the life and martyrdom of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, A Hidden Life, ends with the words of George Eliot, quoted in full:
For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs.
Franz Jägerstätter was a farmer in the small Austrian village of Sankt Radegund. He was murdered by the Nazis in 1943 for his refusal to take the oath of loyalty to Hitler, an oath which Franz saw as demonic. His refusal to betray his faith—which led to his execution by guillotine in Berlin—was, at that time, only known to a few people.
As portrayed in the film, people told Franz that his act would be unknown. Even the parish priest and local bishop told him to “just say the words,” even if he did not mean them. Most of the villagers, ‘faithful Catholics,’ opposed Franz, and made the life of his wife, Franziska—both while Franz was imprisoned and for many years after his death—one of misery and hostility. She lived to see her husband beatified in 2007 and died at the age of 100 in 2013. Many feel that Franziska should also be a candidate for beatification.
His choice was unhistoric at the time, but when his hidden life was revealed, his act, and the faithful Catholic life that produced it, was shown to be both heroic and historic. Jägerstätter rejected Humpty Dumpty’s doctrine, that “when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean,” as did St. Thomas More. It is true that when More was asked to state that the king’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon had been invalid and to take the oath of supremacy, he attempted to keep silent. But, as with Franz, when silence became impossible, he spoke the truth. For both men, death was the cost of their witness to Christ, who is the Truth.
Franz, his wife, and three children lived their Catholic faith intensely, but in an entirely ordinary way. They shared a sacramental, biblical, and faithful life. They were simple farmers who followed Christ. When their private faith clashed with profound evil in the public square, Blessed Franz’s fidelity to Christ and his moral integrity had public consequences.
The Church has three basic reasons to canonize certain persons. For a martyr, the heroic public witness of giving one’s life for Christ is acknowledged. Their prayers in heaven assist the faithful on earth. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is a twofold reason: their example and the encouragement it gives the faithful to imitate them. When the Church beatifies or canonizes a person, She tells us that holiness and heroic virtue are possible.
The example of the saints provides a vital service to the faithful. A Catholic life can only remain hidden for so long; every Catholic will face a moment when their faith will demand public action, whatever the cost. In a time of crisis, which also means a time of opportunity, men, women, and children are used by God to show us that sanctity and heroism are part of the call of our baptism. The saints, at all times in the history of the Church, address particular needs, but their witness is eternal.
Blessed Franz Jägerstätter is as important, if not more so, now than in the midst of the horrors of the atheistic Nazi regime. His witness of fidelity in family life after a wild youth, his devotion to the Church and its sacramental life, and most critically, his witness to the truth in a world of lies, makes him a monumental figure. He is worthy not only of veneration, but also of imitation.
Light in the Darkness
If God raises certain humans at particular times in the life of the Church as exemplars of the faith, we should not treat it as a coincidence. In fact, St. John Paul II taught that coincidence does not exist. Instead, these things are the result of God’s providence.
On September 10, 2023, in the small Polish village of Markowa, a bucolic place not dissimilar to Sankt Radegund, the Ulma family was beatified as martyrs. Jozef, his wife Wiktoria, their seven children, including the boy in her womb, are the first family to be specifically beatified as individuals, not as a part of a larger group of martyrs. The unborn child, who may have been born as Wiktoria was being martyred, is the first unborn baby, baptised by blood, to be beatified in the life of the Church.
In 1995, Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center, declared the Ulma family “Righteous Among the Nations.” They had taken in a total of eight members of three Jewish families in 1942. This heroic act—declared by the Nazi occupiers as punishable by death—was chosen because of their Catholic faith. In their statement celebrating the event, the Polish bishops noted that the Ulma family Bible was regularly used and certain passages were underlined, including the story of the Good Samaritan. Their ‘hidden life’ had deep roots. On March 24, 1944—just a year after Bl. Franz was executed in Berlin—the Nazis, aided by Polish collaborators, arrived at the farm, executed the Jewish people and the entire Ulma family.
Jozef, a simple farmer and a keen amateur photographer, left us a pictorial witness of his family life: faithful, happy, family-centered, with the practice of Catholicism at its heart.
Their act of mercy in a time of darkness was a witness and moment of light, needed desperately then and now. The Chief Rabbi of Poland, who attended the beatification, said that it was a “very important step by the Church to show the faithful how they should act.” The faithful must imitate this example and live their faith publicly, where the light can be seen.
As the official portrait of the Ulma family was revealed at the beatification in Markowa, several unique and descriptive features were revealed. All had halos, including a small halo over Wiktoria’s belly, where her son was waiting to be born. Jozef holds the martyr’s palm, for their charity was a witness to their fidelity to Christ and his truth. One of the daughter’s holds the lily of purity, and the smallest boy presents a Cross to his sister.
St. Leo the Great, in one of his sermons on the Beatitudes writes:
Mercy demands that you be merciful, righteousness that you be righteous, so that the Creator may be shown forth in the creature and that, in the mirror of man’s heart as in the lines of a portrait, the image of God may be reflected.
The Blessed Ulma family were merciful and righteous. Blessed Franz was a witness to the truth and goodness. They all, in their lives and ultimately in their deaths, are “as in the lines of a portrait,” reflecting the image of God.
The Church now has a family to champion the family; a beatified unborn child to witness to the sanctity of human life, and to pray for all the millions of ‘unknown’ children lost to the great sin of abortion. They are martyrs of mercy, righteousness, and fidelity. With Blessed Franz, they witness to the truth, hidden lives revealed, that show that “things are not so ill with you or me as they might have been.”
