St. Adalbert, Bishop and Martyr
Feast day: April 23
“It is an easy thing to wear the mitre and a cross, but it is a most dreadful circumstance to have an account to give of a bishopric to the judge of the living and the dead.”
These are the words of St. Adalbert, the first bishop of Prague who also evangelized beyond Czech borders and worked to improve the holiness of the Church’s people despite receiving little appreciation for his efforts in his lifetime. Born in approximately 956, he came from a wealthy Bohemian family, and was baptized Wojtech. Confirmed as Adalbert after his teacher and mentor, St. Adalbert of Magdeburg, he was trained in theology in Magdeburg, Germany, and was known from the earliest days of his priesthood for his devotion to helping the poor.
However, his efforts at reforming the clergy in Bohemia as bishop of Prague made him very unpopular. Further differences arose as St. Adalbert opposed the participation of Christians in the slave trade, and he was openly critical of polygamy and idolatry, common among the people at that time. The resistance he received from both secular powers and clergy was so strong that he felt compelled to leave Prague, and he went to Rome for permission to be released from his responsibilities as a bishop. With this permission granted, St. Adalbert became a Benedictine monk and lived a very austere life.
But asked by his people to come back to his diocese, he returned and was greeted with enthusiasm as he founded the monastery at Brevnov. Nevertheless, St. Adalbert still had to deal with much persecution and many of the same superficial attitudes towards the Faith. He had intense conflicts with the nobility, probably involving feuds between members of royalty.
Still, St. Adalbert never gave up trying to reform the Church and spreading the Faith. He was expelled from Prague again, returned to Rome and focused instead on evangelizing the Hungarians, who had a growing interest in Christianity. As a missionary, he baptized the Hungarian king and his family and then turned to evangelizing the Polish people. In Poland, he was made archbishop of Gniezno. From there, he went out to evangelize the people of Prussia. Although having some success, he was killed at the prompting of one of the pagan priests in 997. St. Adalbert was canonized in 999, and today is known as the Apostle of Prussia.
Although St. Adalbert had with mixed success in evangelizing, his influence extended to befriending Emperor Otto III, the holy Roman emperor and king of Italy. He was an inspiration to St. Boniface of Querfurt, bishop, missionary and martyr. St. Adalbert was later declared the patron saint of the Czech Republic, Poland and the Duchy of Prussia. He is also the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Esztergom in Hungary.
In his homily at a solemn Mass celebrated in 1999 in Gdansk, Poland, on the 1,000th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Adalbert, Pope St. John Paul II recalled, “Adalbert is that evangelical seed which fell to the earth and died, and has brought forth a manifold harvest in all the nations associated with his mission. This was the case of Bohemia, Hungary, the Poland of the Piasts, and also of Pomerania, Gdansk, and the people living in this region. After the 1,000 years which separate us from his death on the Baltic, we are becoming ever more fully aware that the blood of this martyr, shed in these territories 10 centuries ago, made an essential contribution to evangelization, faith, a new life. How great is our need today to follow the example of his life devoted completely to God and to the spread of the Gospel. His witness of service and apostolic fervour was profoundly rooted in faith and love of Christ.”
Reflection
Lord Jesus, you are the light of the world. Give me the courage to follow the example of St. Adalbert by spreading the Gospel wherever you call me to go as your disciple.
Prayer
O God, who bestowed the crown of martyrdom
on the Bishop Saint Adalbert,
as he burned with zeal for souls,
grant, we pray, by his prayers,
that the obedience of the flock may never fail the shepherds,
nor the care of the shepherds be ever lacking to the flock.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God, for ever and ever.
