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Reflection on Today’s Feast

By Fr. Thomas Benz, SJ

Have you ever run across some injustice but found yourself tongue-tied or afraid to speak up?  Let me introduce a Jesuit patron for you!

Growing up in Buffalo, I had relatives who attended Canisius College, so I always associated the German Jesuits with the sixteenth-century giant, St. Peter Canisius, the great teacher and preacher.  When I visited Germany in 1988, however, I stumbled upon an urban chapel and discovered another, more recent story of courage and a new spiritual companion in Blessed Rupert Mayer, SJ (1876-1945).

I had just completed a program in German Studies at Georgetown and was aware of several courageous Christian witnesses who had grappled with the evils of twentieth-century National Socialism (Nazism), e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Edith Stein, Maximilian Kolbe.  I was on my way to a summer language program in Regensburg, and when I passed through Munich on the way there, the steady stream of pilgrims stopping at the tomb of a Father Mayer in the Bürgersaal (People’s Chapel) along the main avenue caught my attention.

When I got to my destination, I spotted a poster advertising an exhibit at Regensburg’s diocesan museum on the life and legacy of this same Father Mayer, who had just been beatified at Munich’s Olympic Stadium.  He was new to me, and I became hooked on the story of this contemporary “Apostle of Munich.”

Rupert Mayer was born in Stuttgart in 1876 and, as a young man, enjoyed riding horses and playing the violin.  He entered the Jesuits at age 24 in 1900, a year after he had been ordained a diocesan priest.  During World War I, he volunteered to serve as an army chaplain.  Sometimes he crawled on his belly to attend to soldiers fallen on the field of battle.  His heroic military service earned him a prestigious medal…and ultimately cost him his left leg.

Having lost the war, Germans found life in the 1920s very difficult.  Father Mayer, now assigned to the Michaelskirche (St. Michael’s, the Jesuit church in Munich), became an attentive shepherd to the poor and unemployed, especially to migrants in search of work.  He was a beloved preacher and confessor, though his stump often caused him a lot of pain during long hours in the confessional.  Under his guidance, the Marian Congregation for Men swelled to 7,000 members across the city.

All the while, he had the courage to stand up to the Nazis when many others still didn’t see the threat they posed – not only to Jews but also to Catholics and other Christians.  He famously asked a crowd assembled in a beer hall, “Can a Catholic be a National Socialist (a Nazi)?”  The people were surprised when he declared, “No!”  His strident protests landed him in jail several times.  In the late 1930s he was barred from his pulpit; but when he was publicly defamed by the Nazis, his superiors urged him to climb the pulpit again and defend himself and the truth.

Early in World War II, Father Mayer was imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near Berlin.  When his health began to fail in 1940, his captors moved him to house arrest in the Benedictine abbey in the Bavarian Alps, lest he be seen as a martyr dying in the camp.  Away from his flock, the next five years of isolation and inactivity were a source of deep suffering for this good shepherd.

He survived the war and returned to St. Michael’s in Munich in 1945.  The church had been bombed out late in the war.  On All Saints’ Day he was celebrating the Eucharist in the lower chapel, when he suffered a stroke in the midst of his homily about heaven.  Those gathered could hear his last words, “The Lord. The Lord. The Lord.”

We usually see pictures of Rupert Mayer looking very somber.  That’s because they’re based on his Nazi mug shot.  But one of my favorite photos shows him standing on the streets of Munich before the Second World War, tilting a little to one side (I suppose, to favor his artificial leg) and with a warm smile on his face, his cane in one hand and a cup in the other to collect alms for the poor.

Lord, give us the clear sight of Rupert Mayer to read “the signs of the times” and the fortitude we need both to serve those in need and to speak the truth of the Gospel!

Blessed Rupert Mayer, selfless pastor and courageous prophet, pray for us!

Fr. Thomas Benz serves as the Provincial Assistant for Pastoral and International Ministries for the USA East Jesuit Province.

Favorite Prayer of Bl. Rupert Mayer, S.J.

Translated and set to music by Fr. Manuel V. Francisco, S.J.

Lord, what You will let it be so.
Where You will, there we will go.
What is Your will? Help us to know.

Lord, when You will, the time is right.
In You there's joy in strife.
For Your will I'll give my life.

To ease Your burden brings no pain.
To forego all for You is gain,
As long as I in You remain.

REFRAIN:

Because You will it, it is best.
Because You will it, we are blest.
Till in Your hands, our hearts find rest,
our hearts find rest.
Till in Your hands our hearts find rest.