Faith that Refuses Silence

Engelmar Unzeitig was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in Germany in 1939, a month before the outbreak of the Second World War. Unlike far too many of his fellow Christians, he refused to remain silent about the obscenities he saw around him and was soon arrested by the Gestapo. Imprisoned in a concentration camp, he became known as the “Angel of Dachau,” working tirelessly for other prisoners and volunteering to help those with typhoid. In March 1945, he contracted the fever himself and died. It was the middle of Lent. 

  “God’s almighty grace helps us overcome obstacles,” he said. “Love doubles our strength, makes us inventive, makes us feel content and inwardly free. If people would only realize what God has in store for those who love Him!” This fine heroic priest lived and died as a shining example of a Christ follower, a devotee of the one who transformed the world by initiating a permanent revolution of love, offering us salvation with a new, pristine covenant, and turning complacent assumptions upside-down.   

Engelmar Unzeitig told friends, both Christian and non-Christian alike, that he knew that many people prefer to wash their hands of the pain and suffering around them, doing nothing while noble victims die in their place. He said others may genuinely lament what was happening in the world, but don’t intervene because they think it would be too dangerous for them. Then there are those, he said, who rejoice in it all. History has certainly taught us that he was correct. 

Such Lenten lands, such Paschal paths, have seldom been as obvious as they are now, and yet for the most part the response is selective and limited. So let us in the church begin the restoration here and now, let us present a new image of organized Christianity to an understandably cynical world. 

Because we need to acknowledge that the Christian faith is in danger of appearing irrelevant or the plaything of various political extremists. Irrelevant? Because outside of the church, we Christians are often seen as odd but harmless eccentrics. A tool of extremism? So-called Christian nationalism, an acidic oxymoron, is growing not only in the U.S. but in Canada, too. Ostensibly Christian commentators with audiences of millions spew racism, antisemitism, and hatred, perverting the creed preached by a first-century Jewish man born to a poor family in an occupied land, and they do this to somehow justify closed borders and closed minds. 

Not that the Christian left is free of blame, many of whom subscribe to a faith summed up by “I protest therefore I am.” Christianity is more complex than that, and I’ve seen inspiring, selfless devotion to the poor from people who vote for all sorts of parties. CS Lewis’s famous book Mere Christianity took its title from 17th-century church leader and theologian Richard Baxter, who wanted to emphasize what united rather than divided Christians. Lewis had a similar idea, but was also responding to those who insisted on qualifying the faith politically. 

What will boost Christianity, what will save Christianity, is Christianity itself. A belief that we have to be constantly aware of those who suffer, must be humble and gentle, desire justice, show mercy, forgive and embrace, do all we can to bring about peace, resist sin, love God with all our heart, mind, and strength, and love others as ourselves. As Victor Hugo wrote in Les Misérables: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” Hugo, of course, had an ambiguous, often critical relationship with the church, and good for him. 

Last November, I stood by a grave in rural England with my arm around an old friend who was mourning his wife. “Why,” he asked me, as angry as he was distraught, “do bad things happen to good people?” In such situations, we should listen rather than speak, try to be there rather than be clever. I said that I didn’t know. Long pause, long hug. “But I do know,” I eventually continued, “that next month I’ll celebrate the birthday of God who took the form of a vulnerable and innocent baby, in part so as to suffer not only for us but with us, so that in our suffering we are never alone.” 

Did it help? I don’t know. I do know that as I travel through Lent, I must try to grow, evolve, and mature in my faith and humanity. Catherine Doherty wrote that, “Lent is a time of going very deeply into ourselves: What is it that stands between us and God? Between us and our brothers and sisters? Between us and life, the life of the Spirit? Whatever it is, let us relentlessly tear it out, without a moment’s hesitation.” 

I think that Engelmar Unzeitig would agree.