Scripture Readings

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Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Tom Roach, SJ

The first time I saw the name Andrew Bobola was in a litany which we sometimes prayed when I was a young Jesuit. Over time, I came to know that he was a Polish Jesuit and a martyr. I could not have foreseen that one day I would have the opportunity to celebrate Mass in the Jesuit Church of Saint Andrew Bobola in Warsaw. His final resting place was in front of the main altar.

 Andrew lived and ministered in Eastern Europe during a period of bitter conflict between Catholics and the Russian Orthodox. The shadows of that conflict stretch even to our own times. Heads of state became involved. Territories were disputed. Violent rhetoric abounded. Andrew was often on the move, going from place to place in an effort to encourage Catholics during persecution.  He was ultimately captured by a group of Cassocks who were virulently anti-Catholic. His tortures were gruesome. He was dragged by horses, flayed alive, dismembered and finally slain by a saber.

 I have no particular bond with Andrew Bobola, but I was blessed to be able to spend more than a year working in a school which had been founded by the Polish Jesuits in 1937 in the port city of Gdynia, Poland, near Gdansk. My mission was to teach in the school and to serve on a team offering courses in administration to leaders of Catholic schools in Eastern Europe. In September of 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland, they arrested the seven Jesuits at the school, placed them in the concentration camp Stutthof and then shot them to death in a nearby forest.

 They were considered dangerous because they were teachers. They had influence. The location of their execution became known, and every September, the first-year students at the Jesuit school would make a pilgrimage to their graves and celebrate Mass. I was privileged to go with them during my year in Gdynia. In fact, my office in the old Jesuit residence had belonged to one of those martyred Jesuits, and a feeling of awe and reverence would often come upon me as I reflected on where I was. I knew that I was in a sacred space. These men were Jesuits and educators, just like me.

 As I reflect on Andrew Bobola, the Jesuit teachers in Gdynia, and the many Jesuit martyrs right up to our own day, I can’t help but think of the exhortation offered by the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews: “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” I certainly don’t expect to be called to follow my brother Jesuits in the same way in which they ran the race. Their spirit, however, is something which I can strive to imitate—facing whatever challenges, trials and setbacks which are sent my way, always determined to reach the goal, which is, for all of us, a person, the very person of Jesus. 

St. Andrew Bobola, pray for us!

Fr. Tom Roach, SJ, serves as the Associate University Chaplain at Loyola University Maryland.