Franz Jaegerstaetter Icon--Snapshot

Franz Jaegerstaetter was an Austrian farmer executed by the Nazis for refusing to serve in the German army during WWII.  Against all motives of patriotism and even against the interests of his family, and certainly counter to his own personal  interests, Jaegerstaetter refused to serve the cause of evil because he believed God's imperatives come before all else.  He was a committed Catholic who fearlessly thought through the teachings of Jesus Christ and his Church, and he followed through on what he knew to be right.

Jaegerstatter was one of the millions who died as a victim of WWII.  Many millions of those were innocents, and many millions of others died in war fighting either for or against the Nazis.  Those who fought in the war are hailed as heroes, willing to die in a fight against evil, but we should ask ourselves, How much pain and suffering and death might have been avoided if sizable numbers of others, within the German Reich and elsewhere, would have been wiling to die in peaceful protest against the Nazi war machine?

The frame of the picture is made up of symbols and images related to the Nazi-dominated socio-political world that framed the life of Franz Jaegerstaetter and his family and friends and fellow citizens of Austria.  The saint is pictured within a sort of mandorla that shows forth a better world--the local world of the saint's home region, surrounded by a border representing his home nation, Austria, through flowers and foliage associated with that nation (the Austrian rose and edelweiss.  Jaegerstaetter's parish church and the house on his farm flank the saint.  Emanating from the mandorla is a sort of secondary halo spreading its light over the framing background of evil that is overcome by the work of Christ in the world such as that done through and by the followers of Christ.