14 August 2020 - Friday of the 19th Week of Ordinary Time - Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr - Isaiah 12:2-3, 4bcd, 5-6

      The psalm we hear today is not actually from the book of psalms, but rather it is from the book of prophet Isaiah.  I think about how sometimes we do not know what words to say in our prayers. We sometimes have emotions, feelings, and thoughts that are difficult to put into words, where we just don’t know how to express these things.  Thus, the words we hear from the psalms, from the prophets, and from the other books of the Bible can help us express our feelings to the Lord.  They can become a prayer for us.  Sometimes, in the Gospels, the disciples ask Jesus how to pray.  In the words of Isaiah, we hear from someone who places his trust in the Lord, as he says: “I am confident and unafraid, my strength and my courage is in the Lord…. With joy, you draw water at the fountain of salvation.”  In the midst of our fears, doubts, frustration, and confusion, we are called to turn to the Lord for strength, consolation, and courage.  That is not always an easy thing to do, but the more we do it, the easier it will become.   

      I could hear the saint we celebrate today pray the words of the psalm I just quoted.  Maximilian Kolbe, born in 1894, became a priest in the order of the Conventual Franciscans in his native country of Poland.  In the early 20th century as a newly ordained priest, Kolbe saw indifference as the greatest sin afflicting the people of his day.  He founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with the witness of the good life, prayer, work, and suffering.  He also founded a Franciscan monastery and publishing house in Poland and a monastery in Japan.  In Poland, not afraid to speak against the occupying Nazi forces, Kolbe was arrested and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp where he would eventually die, having taken the place of a man with a family who was going to be put to death. Kolbe was canonized a saint in 1982 by Pope John Paul II, who was from his native country of Poland.  He is the patron saint of prisoners and those who are struggling with addictions.  We lift up our prayers with the prayers of St Kolbe today.