My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,
In the coming week, on Aug. 14, we celebrate the Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He is a saint of modern times who met his death in Auschwitz in 1941.
Maximilian was a Polish Conventual Franciscan Friar who volunteered to die in place of a stranger in the Nazi concentration camp of then-German-occupied Poland during World War II. His life is an inspiring one, which is why I chose him to continue my summer with the saints series.
He was a humble man who earned a doctorate of theology in Rome and returned to Poland to begin spreading devotion to Mary Immaculate. Not only did he found a monastery and seminary but also a radio station, as well as writing many publications which became the means of spreading the faith. The very means of communication, however, is what attracted the attention of the Nazi occupying forces to Maximilian. He was sent to Auschwitz where there were many other priests who were also imprisoned.
Toward the end of July in 1941, three prisoners disappeared from this concentration camp. A Nazi commander decided to pick 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker at the camp in order to deter further escape attempts by other prisoners. One man cried out, “My wife, my children!”
Sustained By Faith
Upon hearing this, Maximilian stepped forward and volunteered to take the man’s place. While in the starvation cell, he prayed each day and sang hymns with the prisoners. After two weeks of this torture, he remained alive but was killed with a lethal injection of carbolic acid. The remains of Maximilian were cremated on Aug. 15, the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.
The canonization of Maximilian Kolbe presented some problems. In many ways, he was obviously a martyr, yet there was some contention that he was perhaps not a martyr in the true sense of the word, because his death was a result of his act of Christian charity. John Paul II, however, made the decision to canonize him as a martyr since John Paul II understood the vehemence and the hatred of the Nazi regime for Christianity.
Maximilian Kolbe is a great example of a man who put out into the deep from the very beginning of his life, trying to bring the message of Christ to the world through devotion to Mary Immaculate. His life can be an example to us of the Marian devotion that sustained him even to the point of giving his life for another.
