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Acta Sanctorum: St. Titus Brandsma (July 27)

July 27, 2026

Fr. John Colacino C.PP.S.

July 27

St. Titus Brandsma

Life (1881-1942)

Titus was born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma on 23 February 1881. His family lived on a large farm at Oegeklooster in the Frisia region of Holland, an area where Catholicism was very strong. Anno was one of seven children, all but one of whom entered religious life. Just before Anno made his first Holy Communion at the age of eleven, he confided to his parents that he wanted to become a priest. He entered a junior seminary, run by Franciscans, the same year. However, at the age of seventeen, he did not begin his novitiate with the Franciscans, but the Carmelites in Boxmeer. Along with the Carmelite habit he was given the name Titus.

It became clear that Brother Titus was a gifted academic and after being ordained priest in 1905 he was sent for further studies in Rome. During this period he suffered some ill health which hampered his studies but he eventually gained his doctorate in Divinity in 1909 at the age of 28.

On returning to Holland, Titus taught philosophy to Carmelites in formation and began a life-long project to translate the works of St Teresa of Avila into Dutch. In 1923 he was appointed to teach philosophy at the new Catholic University of Nijmegen. His students recalled his wonderful sense of humour and how he always had time for them. Titus was appointed Rector Magnificus of the University in 1932. He also travelled around Europe and to the United States to speak about Carmelite mysticism. In 1935, he was appointed by the Dutch bishops as a chaplain and advisor to Catholic journalists. It was this appointment which would lead ultimately to his imprisonment and death.

The Nazi invasion of Holland took place on 10 May 1940. Their ruthless persecution of the Jews is well known. Titus defended the Jewish people, especially Jewish children who attended Catholic schools, and stated that “the Church in carrying out her mission makes no distinction between sex, race or people.” In late 1941, the Catholic press were ordered to carry advertisements on behalf of the Nazi party. The Catholic hierarchy asked Titus to intervene, which he did with great courage, writing to all editors of Catholic publications and pleading with them to defy the order. Someone betrayed him to the Nazi authorities.

He was arrested on 19 January 1942 and spent seven weeks at the prison in Scheveningen, before being transferred with a hundred other prisoners to Amersfoot concentration camp. He spent nearly two months there, before being sent back to Scheveningen for further questioning. The head of the secret police called Titus “that dangerous little friar.” When it became clear that Titus would not go against his conscience and give in to the demands of the Nazi party, he was sent to Dachau. He was in a part of the camp reserved for priests and religious, mainly Polish, and including a Carmelite brother. The physical labour, harsh living conditions and frequent beatings all took their toll on Titus who was already in delicate health. Towards the end of July he was taken to the camp ‘hospital’- in reality an experimental laboratory where he suffered more degrading treatment. Finally, on 26 July 1942, an SS nurse administered a fatal injection. She testified at the beatification process that Titus had given her his rosary, encouraging her to pray and saying that he would pray for her.

Titus was beatified by Pope St John Paul II on 3 November 1985 and canonized by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022.

Source: https://carmelitenuns.uk/saint-titus-brandsma/

Scripture. (2 Timothy 2:3-13)

Join with me in suffering, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer. Similarly, anyone who competes as an athlete does not receive the victor’s crown except by competing according to the rules. The hardworking farmer should be the first to receive a share of the crops. Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this. Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel, for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained. Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they too may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. Here is a trustworthy saying:

If we died with him,
    we will also live with him;
if we endure,
    we will also reign with him.
If we disown him,
    he will also disown us;
if we are faithless,
    he remains faithful,
    for he cannot disown himself.

Writings

(Year A). We admire the mystical life as the abundance of God’s love and grace; so rich an abundance that God’s living and working in us clearly speaks in us, the mind no longer is capable of reasoning about it, nor faith capable of making us accept it, but we live conscious of it, experience and contemplate it in us, and are wholly filled with it. There is in it a wonderful mix of Divine free election and of human preparation. While the Divine Sun-fire radiates his glow whither He desires, it is the sun-yearning of the soul that draws the rays of the divine love-blaze into the heart of the flower, which continuously turns itself towards the Sun. However, just as the flower turns itself towards the sun, influenced by the sunrays themselves, the receptivity and preparation to ascend into God’s love-fire, our transformation in Him, is again a work of God’s grace, which does not nullify, but enhances nature.

Already in the Song of Songs, the ascent of the soul to that transformation in God was described for us under the image of the ascent of the bride, who decorates herself for the wedding with the most beautiful jewels, received from the Beloved, to so approach him in her highest beauty for the most intimate union, the spiritual marriage, out of which God is born, united to our human nature. This is a profound mystery, but St. John of the Cross tells us that God unveiled this mystery for us in his miraculous incarnation in the womb of Mary, who conceived of the Holy Spirit, whose power overshadowed her.

In Mary we see the most beautiful image of our union with God. She, the bride of the Holy Spirit, teaches us how also we, although not in that fullness of grace, but in a removed sense, must be brides of God the Holy Spirit, how his overshadowing power must also make us conceive God, in order that He be born in us, united, also in us, with human nature, our human nature. We must, under the beneficial influence of the Holy Spirit, be born to a new life with God, who lives in us, more than we live through ourselves. Mary is thus our Guide on our way to the mystical union with God.

For the great Teacher of Mysticism, St. John of the Cross, the Holy Mother of God is the ideal of the soul that ascends to God and is drawn by God to Himself. His ascent to the tops of the Carmel where the divine Light radiates towards him, is, like in Dante’s ascent to Heaven, accompanied by the “Ave Maria”. A favourite image, under which St. John of the Cross with so many other mystical writers illuminates the necessity of our receptivity and purity in order to receive God within us, is the image of the window that must let through the light of the sun. On the paintings of our Flemish masters, in the presentation of the Message of the Angel to Mary, this image is not rare. We see the Holy Spirit as a sunray that casts its light through the window. The window is the image of Mary. No creature took up more purely that divine Light that came into this world; no one gave it on more purely and became more one with Him than Mary. Mary is the clearest pane of glass, who let through the Light of the world pristinely for us and who was wholly filled with it. It applies first and foremost to her what St. John says about the mystical union, that the soul and all that is peculiar to God are then one through a transformation that causes the soul to seem more God than itself, is God through its sharing in the Divine nature, although its essence in nature remains in spite of its rebirth, just as distinct from God’s essence as before, just as the pane of glass, however much illuminated by the sunray, all the same retains its own nature, totally different from that of the sunrays. “If, however, the pane of glass is clean”, thus he then says, “clean and clear, then the sunray will in such a way illuminate and, as it were, transform it that it seems to be the sunray itself and gives the same light.”

In his Explanation of the “The Living Flame of Love”, St. John of the Cross draws the Holy Mother of God as clearly as possible into the circle of his metaphor clarifying the mystical life. Speaking of the shining of the Lamps of God in us and our intake of the divine Light, which means as much as participating in Gods characteristics and works, he says that this bears still another name, i.e. “to overshadow”. And in connection to this he reminds (us) that also the Archangel Gabriel called the exquisite privilege of Mary to conceive God’s Son, an overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. If one wants to understand, the Saint thus follows, what is meant by that spreading of God’s shadow or that overshadowing or that shining, for all these expressions have an equal meaning, then one should remember that every creature evokes a shadow according to its own nature and capacity. A dark opaque object gives an obscure shadow: a bright translucent object a clear and transparent shadow. Thus, the shadow of something dark will call forth a different darkness, darker to the extent that its cause is also darker, while the shadow of something bright will be light according to the nature of the original light. Therefore, the shadow brought forth by the lamp of God’s beauty will be a different beauty, the shadow by the lamp of strength a different strength etc. or better said, all these shadows will be the beauty itself, the strength itself of God, but in shadow, because the soul here on earth cannot perfectly understand or take God into itself. Over Mary, the Holy Spirit came in all his fullness, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her in the most perfect way. (Writings)

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