On this week's episode of The Nonviolent Jesus Podcast, I reflect on Franz Jagerstatter, one of the most important saints in history.
In the late 1970s, while a student at Duke University, wondering what to do with my life, my grandmother gave me a pamphlet about Franz. I was amazed by the story of a young Austrian farmer, born on May 20, 1907, who in 1936 married Franziska, the local sacristan at their church in St. Radegund.
HIs wife, Franziska, was a saint, so he tried to become a saint too.
When the Nazis invaded Austria in 1938, nearly everyone in Austria supported the Nazis. In February 1943, Franz received a letter ordering him to turn himself in and join the Nazi military, where he would be sent off to the Russian front. He went and spoke with several priests and even the bishop. Each one of them said it was his duty as a Catholic to fight for Hitler. But what about Jesus? he asked them.
So Franz refused to fight, was arrested, imprisoned, taken to Berlin, brought before the Nazi high court, condemned to death for “undermining military morale,” and beheaded on August 9, 1943.
I’ve been studying him for decades, and in the 1990s, became a friend of his wife Franziska and family. In this episode, I review Franz’s life, my own experience with Franziska and his beatification in Austria, and some concluding lessons, which I hope will encourage you in your own commitment to the nonviolent Jesus.
I think Franz demonstrates a new political mysticism, a sanctity that is a threat to the empire and the culture of war.
I think this has to become the new norm, as it was in the early Church.
“As a Christian, I prefer to do my fighting with the Word of God and not with arms,” he wrote from prison. “We need no rifles or pistols for our battle, but instead spiritual weapons—and the foremost among these is prayer…Let us love our enemies, bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us. For love will conquer and will endure for all eternity. And happy are they who live and die in God’s love.”
beatitudescenter.org
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