Introduction:
Some of the youth, their parents, and their advisors here at our parish of Holy Savior were studying apologetics this summer. One of the activities the was recommended by the authors of the book on apologetics was to study about the saints and to pray with them and to see them as examples of faith who motivate us to live out our faith and defend our faith. I hope to periodically reflect upon different saints through the year, especially those saints who can appeal to our youth. Maximilian Kolbe is an important saint for me personally. Through the challenges that I often face in the Catholic prison ministry, I call upon St Maximilian Kolbe to guide me and to encourage me.
Quotes:
"You come to me and unite yourself intimately to me under the form of nourishment. Your blood now runs in mine, Your soul, Incarnate God, penetrates mine, giving courage and support. What miracles! Who would have ever imagined such!”
“God dwells in our midst, in the Blessed Sacrament of the altar.”
“Prayer is powerful beyond limits when we turn to the Immaculata, who is queen even of God’s heart.”
“A single act of love makes the soul return to life.”
“For Jesus Christ, I am prepared to suffer still more.”
“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it.”
Narrative of his life:
He was born Raymund Kolbe in 1894 in Zduńska Wola, Poland, which was at the time part of the Russian empire. He parents, a weaver and a midwife, were ethnically German. He had four brothers, two of whom died of tuberculosis when they were young. He was very mischievous and head-strong as a boy. His mother did not know what to do with him. As a young boy, he had a vision of Mary one night, which he described in this way: “That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.” This was to foretell the way he would live his life and the way his life would end.
In 1910, at the age of 16, he entered the novitiate of the religious order the Conventual Franciscans, taking the religious name Maximilian. He studied in Rome, where he earned degrees in philosophy and theology. While he was studying, in the midst of WWI, his father joined the Polish forces associated with the army of the Austro-Hungarian empire. His father was captured later that year by the Imperial Russian Army and was hanged as a traitor. The news of his father's execution as a very traumatic experience for Maximilian Kolbe.
During his studies in Rome, he became active in the consecration and entrustment to Mary. He also witnessed demonstrations there against the Pope by Freemasons. To counter these demonstrations, Kolbe started the Militia Immaculatae (Army of the Immaculate Mary) in 1917, a group of Catholics who prayed for the conversion of sinners and enemies of the Catholic Church, specifically the Freemasons, through the intercession of Mary. This group popularized devotions to Mary.
Returning to Poland, he founded a monthly publication entitled the Knight of the Immaculate, first at a printing press he operated. As his publications grew, he founded a new Conventual Franciscan monastery near Warsaw. It became a major Catholic publishing center. After encountering some Japanese Catholics who told of the lack of Catholic missionaries in Japan, he traveled to Asia, starting in Shanghai, China in 1930, and then later going to Japan and founding a monastery just outside the city of Nagasaki. He later returned to Poland, where his publishing house was flourishing. He now had a daily newspaper and a radio station. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he was one of the few priests who remained in the monastery.
On 17 February 1941, the Gestapo shut down his Franciscan monastery and arrested Kolbe along with four others. He was incarcerated in the Pawiak prison in Warsaw, Poland. On 28 May 1941, Kolbe was transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp as prisoner #16670. At Auschwitz, he ministered to his fellow prisoners. As a result, the guards often harassed him and subjected him to beatings. After one such beating, some inmates took him to the prison infirmary. In July 1941, a prisoner escaped from the camp. In reprisal, the deputy commander of the prison ordered guards to pick ten men to be starved to death in a bunker. One man who was selected had a wife and children. Spontaneously, Kolbe volunteered to take his place. While in the bunker, Kolbe ministered to the other men. After the group in the bunker had been starved and deprived of water for two weeks, only Kolbe and three others remained alive. Impatient to empty the bunker, the guards gave the four remaining prisoners lethal injections of carbolic acid. Kolbe died on 14 August 1941. He was cremated on 15 August on the feast day of the Assumption of Mary.
Canonization:
Kolbe was canonized by Pope John Paul II in October 1982. He was declared a confessor and a martyr of charity. Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man Kolbe saved at Auschwitz, survived the Holocaust and was present as a guest at both the beatification in 1971 and the canonization in 1982. St Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of those struggling with drug and alcohol addiction primarily because of the manner of his death in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where his life was ended with a lethal injection of carbolic acid. Also, a part of his ministry as a Franciscan priest, he was active in counseling and helping men struggling with alcoholism. He is also the patron saint of prisoners.
What we can learn from the life of St Maximilian Kolbe:
His life teaches us power of radical self-sacrifice, the importance of placing our trust in God during times of pain and suffering, and the power of performing acts of love for others. His life as a Franciscan priest who volunteered to die in place of a stranger at Auschwitz shows how everyday choices prepare our soul for sacrificial acts of Christian love.
