Robert Ellsberg’s Blessed Among Us: Day by Day with Saintly Witnesses; Volume 2 is now available from Liturgical Press.
“I have the courage to become a saint. Only holiness is the fullest form of love, and so I don’t just want but must become a saint, a modern saint, a theocentric humanist.”
Blessed Natalia Tulasiewicz
Marytr (1906-1945)
Natalia Tulasiewicz, a young Polish teacher and Catholic laywoman, felt deeply called to serve God in the world. Breaking off a long-term engagement, she wrote, “It seems to me that I am on the path to a new era in my life. . . . Now I love life more than ever before. I have always loved it in God; today I desire in the fullest sense to live in God!”
With the German invasion in 1939, her life changed abruptly. With an hour’s notice, her family was ordered to vacate their home in Poznan. Hurriedly, she scribbled a note to the Germans who would occupy her home, imploring them to water the plants. Eventually she found work in Krakow, where she engaged in clandestine educational and religious activities. “Only here do I fully realize . . . how important it is to go outside and fill in the gap between a saint in a monastery and a layperson outside. . . . Let us carry the holiness in our souls to the streets!”
In 1943, she volunteered to accompany other Polish women sent to Germany to perform heavy labor. Though she hoped to be a missionary among her fellow deportees, she was arrested by the Gestapo, tortured, and sent to Ravensbruck concentration camp. There she continued to offer her spiritual witness, until March 31, 1945, two days before the liberation of the camp, when she was sent to the gas chamber. She was beatified in 1999.
