Ordinary to Extraordinary
Several times in these blogs, starting in 2015, I’ve written about one of my heroes, Franz Jaggerstatter. That’s because back in college I was so impressed with the book, “In Solitary Witness. The Life and Death of Franz Jägerstätter” by Gordon Zahn.
I suppose one of the things that drew me to Jagerstatter is the fact that he was “an ordinary guy,” an Austrian farmer who tried to avoid the fatal conflict between his faith and the political and military juggernaut that seemed to be conquering the world.
Jaggerstatter was born out-of-wedlock and his father was killed in the First World War when Jaggerstatter was eight. His fellow villagers, according to Wikipedia, remembered the young Franz as “a jolly, robust, fun-loving, hot-blooded, ‘he-man’ type,” intelligent and “bull-headed,” who tended to be “ahead of the crowd” in his interests and the first to try something new; he was the first in his village to own a motorcycle.
Several Days in Jail
He regularly went to Mass (which nearly all Catholics did in those days), but there was nothing to foreshadow the devotion he was known for in later years. He was also remembered for having spent several days in jail after a fight with members of a gang “provoked by the attention paid by members of the group to local girls.”
It was later in life that Jaggerstatter showed he was far from ordinary. When the German army invaded Austria in 1938, says Wikipedia, he was the only person in the village to vote against the annexation of Austria into Germany. He was dismayed to witness many Catholics in his town supporting the Nazis, writing, “I believe there could scarcely be a sadder hour for the true Christian faith in our country.”
At age 33, he was conscripted into the German Wehrmacht. He refused to take the Hitler oath and faced with his experiences in military service, the suppression of the church, as well as reports on the Nazi euthanasia program, he began to examine the morality of the war. He even discussed this with his bishop but emerged from the conversation saddened that the bishop seemed afraid to confront the issues.
Refusal to Take the Hitler Oath
When he was called to active duty in 1943, Jägerstätter had three daughters, the eldest not quite six. He declared his conscientious objection, was immediately arrested and placed in custody. A priest from his village visited him in jail and tried to talk him into serving in the army but did not succeed. When Jaggerstatter heard of the fate of another Austrian priest, Father Franz Reinisch, who had been executed for his refusal to take the Hitler oath, Jagerstatter was determined to go the same way.
He was sentenced to death for sedition in a military trial and was deported to a German prison where he was executed by guillotine that afternoon at age 36. Minutes before his execution, he was given the option to sign a document to save his life and declined. Jägerstätter’s last recorded words before his death were, “I am completely bound in inner union with the Lord.”
In these blogs, I frequently use the term “searching for God” and refer to “people who search for God.” You may think I’m referring to atheists or agnostics, people who are non-believers in the traditional sense but who are open to belief.
Also Referring to Believers
Although I always have them in mind when writing these blogs, I’m also referring to believers when referring to “people who are searching for God” because no matter how much or how little faith we have, we should always strive to better understand who God is and who we are.
Faith, after all, is not a static thing. Like all aspects of human life, it needs to grow, which happens normally through study, prayer and helping others. But faith is not just about belief. Believers who take their faith seriously want to make their faith operative in their daily lives. It’s one thing to believe in God, another to have confidence that God is always with us – having that “inner union with the Lord,” of which Jaggerstatter wrote.
The test for this kind of faith is adversity.
Hopefully, we won’t be tested as severely as Franz Jaggerstatter but we will be tested nonetheless, – about whether we live out our faith or search for God – in the decisions we make, in our treatment of others, in our political and social votes for gospel values, and in our care of the poor and the disenfranchised.
