Saint of the day June 17: Saint Albert Chmielowski. Catholic Saints

Every June 17, the Church celebrates Saint Albert Chmielowski, a Polish religious, whom many describe as “one of the most important saints of our time.”

Chmielowski was a painter by profession, an artist who would later become religious, moved by his immense desire to serve the Lord in his brothers. And, as if this were not enough, the life testimony that he left and his spiritual figure became his greatest legacy: Antonio was the man who inspired Pope Saint John Paul II, his most distinguished compatriot, to know and to love his particular vocation.

Saint Albert Chmielowski was the founder of the Congregation of the Albertine Sisters Servants of the Poor – the current name of the congregation – and of the Brothers of the Third Regular Order of Saint Francis, Servants of the Poor – known as “Albertines” -.

young patriot

Adam Hilario Bernardo Chmielowski was born in a small town in the kingdom of Poland (at that time annexed to the Russian Empire), on August 20, 1845. Of aristocratic origin, he grew up in a climate in which patriotic ideals and love of people were mixed. those who suffered abandonment.

When he turned 18 he began to study agriculture and forestry resources. At that time he participated in the so-called “Insurrection of 1863” against the political and cultural “Russification” of Poland. He was seriously injured in a leg, which later had to be amputated. Chmielewski then decides to take refuge in Belgium, a country where he studies engineering and painting, leaving his agricultural career behind. He then moved to Paris and then to Munich.

In 1873 an amnesty was decreed in Poland and Chmielewski began his return. In Poland he came into contact with poverty and misery, renounced professional painting and committed himself to helping the poor, sick and homeless. During those days he met Saint Rafael Kalinowski, who would be his spiritual director.

Man of God

In 1880, Chmielewski entered the Jesuit novitiate in the town of Stara Wies, but did not stay there long. He then decides to volunteer at a public shelter for homeless people. In 1887 he requested admission to the Third Order of Saint Francis and in 1888 he made religious vows taking the name “Alberto.”

Brother Alberto became the organizer and manager of numerous charitable works: asylums, shelters for the poorest, houses for the mutilated and incurably sick. He sends the sisters of the congregation he founded to work in military hospitals; He opens several soup kitchens for the hungry and orphanages for homeless children and youth.

Santo

After a life of dedication, the saint died of stomach cancer in 1916, in Krakow, in the asylum that he had founded in the city. He was beatified on June 22, 1983 by Pope Saint John Paul II, who also canonized him on November 12, 1989.

At the time of his death, Saint Albert left 21 houses for religious men and women in various countries, in which today they continue to provide service to those most in need.

Through the eyes of Saint John Paul II

At the canonization mass of Saint Albert Chmielowski, Pope Saint John Paul II said: “At the age of 17 (1863), as a student at the agricultural school, he participated in the insurrectionary struggle to free his country from foreign yoke, and In that fight he suffered a leg mutilation. “He sought the meaning of his vocation through artistic activity, leaving works that still impress today with a particular expressive capacity.”

The Polish Pope also recalled how a few years later, in 1874, when Albert was already a mature artist, he decided to dedicate “art, talent and his aspirations to the glory of God”, giving a turn to his life; becoming a servant of God. That interior transformation precipitated a change in his work, as religious themes began to predominate in his art.

Art and the Christian life

It is true that Brother Alberto left professional activities related to art to dedicate his life to the service of the marginalized and forgotten. However, it is also true that he did not completely stop painting. Art can be liberating for the artist who wants to express himself through his work, as an excellent means to move the viewer and evangelize.

For example, one of the most recognized paintings of the saint, titled “Behold the man” (“Behold, the Man”, words with which Pilate presented Christ to the crowd with the aim of deciding his final destiny), is the result of a profound experience of the merciful love of God, as well as human fragility, key experiences in the spiritual transformation of the Polish saint and artist.