“But even though this heroic witness strongly speaks to us, there is yet a second characteristic that actually impresses me even more: their love for their fellow human being, their drive to make him happy. What a different spirit lives in many in this age. ‘Why should one worry about the other.’ ‘Let everyone care for himself.’ ‘It is his own fault, if he does not get ahead in the world, if he has no luck.’ We live in a world in which people even condemn love and call it a weakness that must be tidied away, that people must get over. “Not love, but development of one’s own power.’ ‘Let each be as strong as possible, let the weak perish.’ Christianity with its preaching on love is called old-fashioned and must be replaced by the old Germanic power. Oh yes, they come to you with those doctrines, and there are those who are very receptive of them. Love is misunderstood; Amor non amatur, Saint Francis of Assisi proclaimed already in his own age; some centuries later in Florence a St. Maria Magdalena de Pazzi, who in ecstasy rang the bell of the Carmelite Monastery to say to the people how beautiful love is. Oh, I would also like to make the bells peal to say to the world how beautiful love is. Even though the new paganism no longer wants love, we shall, with history in mind, still win over that paganism with love and not vanquish our love. Love will let us again win the heart of the pagans. Nature transcends dogma. Let the theory reject and condemn love, call her a weakness, the practice of life will always again make her be a power that wins over the hearts of the people and holds them captive. ‘Look, how they love one another’. That saying of the pagans about the first Christians, the new pagans must again say about us. Then we will win over the world. And that is why I gladly hold both these heroes before you as apostles of love, who preach us to indeed care about the happiness of other people; who show us a life, totally borne by love and therefore so strong and so heroic, because such love glowed in their heart. ‘Who has greater love for his friends than he who gives his life for them’. They gave of theirs and counted it as nothing, where the offering of it seemed to them to be the way to bring our forefathers to Christianity, that is to eternal happiness. First Saint Willibrord alone, then Boniface alone, then they, during almost three years, both together gave here in Friesland proof that they held the word of the Lord in mind, which calls us all, out of love for God and, what is the same thing, out of love for fellow human beings, to offer everything, even life.”
St. Titus Brandsma
From “Sermon during the vigil of the National Pilgrimage to Dokkum,” translated by Maurits Sinninghe Damsté.
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