Deepertruth: Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Titus Brandsma

 “Almighty Father, I place the Precious Blood of Jesus before my lips before I pray, that my prayers may be purified before they ascend to Your divine altar.”

Stand In The Gap With Us And Saint Titus Brandsma. 7/27/2024.  Given the birth name Anno, Brandsma and his siblings grew up on their parents’ dairy farm in rural Frisia. As devout Catholics, the family was in the minority among their Calvinist neighbors. From age 11 Anno was educated at a preparatory school for boys who were studying for the priesthood. He joined the Carmelite novitiate in 1898, taking the name Titus in honor of his father.

In the years following his 1905 ordination, Brandsma received a doctorate in philosophy and initiated a project to translate the works of Saint Teresa of Avila into Dutch. One of the founders of the Catholic University of Nijmegen, he served as a professor of philosophy and the history of mysticism at the school. While there Brandsma was known more for his availability to faculty and students than for his academic achievements.

As a journalist, Brandsma was fearless. He spoke out when it seemed everyone else was quietly looking the other way. He was willing to stand alone against a government that resisted the will of the people. When he lived and worked in the Netherlands during the 1930s and ’40s, social media had not yet developed. What Pope John Paul II called the “digital continent” — that new way of communicating across borders — was the stuff of imagination. Still, Titus Brandsma, a priest of the Carmelite order and a journalist, managed to communicate widely with the Dutch faithful. He served as editor of his local newspaper and as ecclesiastical adviser to Catholic journalists at some 30 Dutch newspapers.