Thursday, August 14, 2025
Memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Kolbe
Solitude is a way to get a little control over our own inner life. It’s not easy. Once we start spending time alone, we discover how chaotic our minds are. We start thinking about thousands of other things – what we should do, whom we are mad at.
When these thoughts come up, gently return to the center. Gradually if you really discover, for instance, that the Lord is your shepherd, you might be able to let go of a few things and be a lot more at peace. You don’t have to be filled with garbage. You can be more centered. – Henri Nouwen]
This was as true in 1894 as it is today. Nine year old Raymund Kolbe, born in Poland, knelt quietly in his bedroom, praying:
That night, I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me, a Child of Faith. 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.
When he was 13, in 1907 Raymund with his brother Francis left home to study at a Franciscan seminary. He became Fr. Maximilian in 1914, the same year his ethnic German father was captured and hanged by Russians for illegal partisan activities.
Come here and listen to the words of the Lord, your God.
Fr. Kolbe felt a strong motivation to “fight for Mary” against enemies of the church. His first Rule of Life was, “I must become a saint, and a great saint.” He traveled as a missionary to Japan and founded a monastery on the outskirts of Nagasaki (shielded by a mountain, the monastery survived the atomic bomb dropped by the USA on August 9, 1945). Suffering from tuberculosis he returned to Poland six years later in 1936.
Always a temptation for more powerful nations around it, Poland was overrun and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939, sparking the Second World War as Great Britain honored their treaty with the Polish people. Fr. Kolbe’s newspaper “The Knight of the Immaculate” offered strong criticism of the invaders:
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. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?
Kolbe was arrested in February 1941 for hiding at least 2000 Jewish people in his monastery and soon taken to Auschwitz as prisoner #16670.
After a few months Fr. Kolbe was allowed to write a letter to his mother:
Dear Mama, At the end of the month of May I was transferred to the camp of Auschwitz. Everything is well in my regard. Be tranquil about me and about my health, because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love. It would be well that you do not write to me until you will have received other news from me, because I do not know how long I will stay here. Cordial greetings and kisses, affectionately, Raymund.
A few months later three prisoners escaped from the camp and in response the Nazi commander ordered 10 men starved to death in an underground bunker …
When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek heard his name he cried out “My wife! My children!” At this point, Kolbe volunteered to take his place.
The Nazi commander replied, “What does this Polish pig want?”
Father Kolbe pointed with his hand to the condemned Franciszek Gajowniczek and repeated: “I am a Catholic priest from Poland; I would like to take his place because he has a wife and children.”
Rather surprised, the commander accepted Kolbe in place of Gajowniczek. Gajowniczek later said:
“I could only thank him with my eyes. I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me – a stranger. Is this some dream?”
After two weeks six of the prisoners had died from dehydration and starvation. Kolbe and the other three received lethal injections to kill them. The priest, who had led the prisoners in prayer and singing every day, lifted his left arm to receive the poison,and died on this day 84 years ago.
Why is it, O sea, that you flee?
O Jordan, that you turn back?
You mountains, that you skip like rams?
You hills, like the lambs of the flock?
His brother Francis followed his father into partisan warfare and died in Buchenwald in 1945. The second Francis, saved from death by Kolbe’s request to replace him, lived to attend the saint’s canonization in 1982. He died in 1995, aged 93.
Let your countenance shine upon your servant, O Lord.
(Joshua 3, Psalm 114, Psalm 119, Matthew 18)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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