Beloved Sons and Daughters in Christ,
As I write to you from Poland, I walk upon ground that trembles with memory. This land is soaked in blood – the blood of saints who would not deny Christ. Auschwitz and countless other places still cry out to Heaven. The earth itself has become a witness that the Church is only truly alive when her children are willing to die for their Lord.
Here, in Auschwitz, St. Maximilian Kolbe laid down his life in the starvation bunker, freely stepping forward to die in the place of another man. Yet his sacrifice was not the sudden generosity of a moment. It was the culmination of a life already crucified with Christ.
As a boy, he saw in a vision two crowns offered him from Heaven: one white, for purity, and one red, for martyrdom. When asked which he would accept, he replied: “I choose both.” That choice marked his entire life. He consecrated himself to the Immaculate Virgin, he preached Christ with fearless clarity, and he founded the Militia of the Immaculata, where faith would flourish in the face of rising darkness.
For his fidelity he was arrested. For Christ he was imprisoned. For Christ he died, sealing his choice of both crowns with his own blood. His martyrdom was the perfect consummation of his priesthood, a total gift to Christ through Mary.
Kolbe is not alone in this witness. St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, Edith Stein, entered the gas chamber as both a daughter of Israel and a bride of Christ. She clung to the Cross when the world stripped her of every earthly belonging.
The 108 Blessed Polish Martyrs – bishops, priests, religious and laity – shed their blood under Nazi and communist persecution. They offered Mass in secret, sheltered the hunted, spoke the truth when silence was demanded. They remind us that holiness is not abstract; it is fidelity in the face of death.
Our Lord Himself spoke to St. Faustina here in Poland: “I bear a special love for Poland, and if she will be obedient to My will, I will exalt her in might and holiness. From her will come forth the spark that will prepare the world for My final coming.”
Poland, consecrated in blood, stands as a prophetic sign.
And yet, brothers and sisters, as I reflect here in this land of martyrs, my heart aches for the Church today. How far we have fallen.
We hear the cry: “I will follow Christ only when He confirms my desires.”
That poison has seeped deep into the Church. We are no longer willing to sacrifice. We prefer to move with the world rather than stand against it. We have forgotten that the Gospel is not about self-fulfillment but self-offering.
Sacred Scripture declares: “And all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer persecution” (2 Timothy 3:12).
This is the law of discipleship. The Church cannot be faithful without the Cross. If we are unwilling to suffer, we are already unfaithful.
The martyrs of Poland cry out to us: A Church that bends to the world is not the Bride of Christ. If we will not die to ourselves, we will not live in Him.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross left us this truth: “Do not accept anything as truth that lacks love. Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth. One without the other is a destructive lie.”
Evil is now enthroned within our culture, and many in the Church are now bowing before it. But we would do well to heed these words:
“For if, flying from the pollutions of the world, through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they be again entangled in them and overcome: their latter state is become unto them worse than the former. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of justice, than after they have known it, to turn back from that holy commandment which was delivered to them. For, that of the true proverb has happened to them: The dog is returned to his vomit: and, The sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire” (2 Peter 2:20-22).
Brothers and sisters, hear me: the time of comfortable Catholicism is over. The time of witnesses has come.
Cling to Christ truly present in the Eucharist, with trembling reverence. Stand with Our Lady at the foot of the Cross. Reject the poison of indifference. Be ready – for the white martyrdom of daily sacrifice or the red martyrdom of blood.
Christ Himself has promised: “ … Be thou faithful until death: and I will give thee the crown of life” (Apocalypse 2:10).
The life we cling to now – our possessions, our pride, all that we think we control – is fragile and will pass away. It is only the life received through Christ that is indestructible.
Brothers and sisters, from the soil of Poland, sanctified by the blood of martyrs, I close this letter with these words:
Let us not settle for a faith of comfort! Instead, let us embrace the fire of fidelity! For it is only by choosing Christ, even if it costs us our very life, that we gain everything!
Bishop Joseph E. Strickland
Bishop Emeritus
