Saint of the Day: St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe

http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/Saints/saint.aspx?id=1107&calendar=1

As a child, one night Maximilian Mary Kolbe prayed to Our Lady to tell him what would happen to
him. She appeared, holding in her hands two crowns, one white, one red and asked which he would
chose: the one of purity, or the other of martyrdom. He said, “I choose both.” From that moment,
his focus in life changed. He entered the minor seminary and became a novice at 16.

Ordained at 24, he saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of the day and he set out to
combat it. He had already founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with
the witness of the good life, prayer, work and suffering. He dreamed of and then founded Knight of
the Immaculata, a religious magazine to preach the Good News to all nations.

In 1939 the Nazis overran Poland; Kolbe and his friars were arrested, but then released in less than
three months on the feast of the Immaculate Conception. In 1941 he was arrested again and sent to
Auschwitz. When a prisoner escaped, the commandant announced that 10 men would die. As they
were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Number 16670 dared to step from the line. “I
would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.” “Who are you?” “A priest.” No
name, no mention of fame. The commandant, dumbfounded, perhaps with a fleeting thought of
history, kicked Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek out of line and ordered Father Kolbe to go with the
nine. In the “block of death” they were ordered to strip naked; their slow starvation began. But there
was no screaming – the prisoners sang. By the eve of the Assumption four were still alive. As Kolbe
sat in a corner praying, he was killed with an injection of carbolic acid. They burned his body with all
the others. He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982.

Comment: Father Kolbe’s death was not a sudden, last-minute act of heroism. His whole life had
been a preparation. His holiness was a limitless, passionate desire to convert the whole world to
God. His beloved Immaculata was his inspiration.