The Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe

Today is the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, my patron saint.  The story of Maximilian Kolbe is one of nigh impossible odds  in many respects, but no matter the setbacks, he always came back from them.  That was part of why I chose him as a patron saint (aside from the fact he began popping up everywhere around me in church bulletin boards, online message boards, etc.).  The other part was because of how his life moved me.

He was born January 8, 1894 as Rajmund Jolbe in Zdunska Wola, a part of the then Russian Empire under the tsars in what would later become Poland.  He had four brothers, two of whom died prior to the age of five, which sadly wasn't uncommon for the time and place.  Later his family would move to Pabianice to find work as basket weavers.  However in 1914, not all was well within Russia; some groups sought to remove the royal family (and would in the Bolshevik Revolution three years later) and others sought freedom from the tyranny of the tsar for their homelands.  Rajmund's father would be executed for fighting for Polish independence in 1914, not as a Communist, but as a man who was fighting for a free nation.

By 1914, however, Rajmund had already crossed illegally into Austria-Hungary seven years prior to join the Conventual Franciscan junior seminary in Lwow with his older brother Francis.  In his childhood he had a vision of the Virgin Mary that would stay with him for the rest of his life, one he would later describe in these words, “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.”



The year of his father's death would see two major events occur in his life; the first was his profession of solemn vows and taking the name Maxmilian Maria, in honor of the Blessed Virgin, with the Conventional Franciscans and second would be the outbreak of the First World War.  One year later in 1915 he earned his doctorate in philosophy (Ph.D.) from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and would earn his doctorate in theology by 1919 at the Pontifical University of Saint Bonaventure.


It was during his time in academia that he began to witness restlessness against Pope Saint Pius X and Pope Benedict XV, which would inspire one of his many pet projects.  In this case, fresh off of building a seminary and printing press in Warsaw after being told it was unlikely it could be done, he set about creating the Militia Immaculata, or as it is more commonly referred to, the Army of Mary.  Its goal was simple; it was to work toward the conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 

To say that his effort was successful would be an understatement.  To bind these people together and to even get the word out, he would need a newspaper.  His superiors told him that he had to raise the money himself and he did, obediently, though the task took some time.  Today he is, among other things, the patron saint of journalists.  His magazine, the Immaculata would have a monthly circulation with a daily newspaper that reached 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million subscribers.
Time marched forward and the world came into the grips of what would later be known as the Great Depression.  In a time when many were reluctant to go very far, or did not have the funds to do so, Maximilian would ask his superiors to allow him to go to Japan to engage in missionary work.  They did not have to think about it very long before Maximilian found himself traveling to a place firmly rooted in Shinto beliefs.

Once there, he needed to build a monastery.  The people of the city it was to be located in were insistent he not offend the local beliefs and customs and not act against the harmony they had cultivated with nature and build the monastery on the side of the mountain facing the city.  He chose to build it on the opposite side of the mountain, where it still stands today as a place of pilgrimage for Japanese Catholics.  His defiance to act within the boundaries of local custom is also what saved this monastery as a site today; around a decade after the monastery was constructed, the second and last atomic bomb to be used in anger would be dropped on this city, a place named Nagasaki.  The mountain was between the monastery and the blast and while there was some damage, it still stood at the end of that day 67 years ago.


 Maximilian would not live to see his monastery survive or the horrific bombing that claimed that city.  Three years after he returned to Poland, the Second World War erupted.  The Nazis, as they entered into other nations, Poland being one of the first after the likes of Czechoslovakia and Austria, would round up the Jews and send them...somewhere.  There were only rumors to go off of, if even that, but Maximilian knew what he had to do as a follower of Christ, as did his brothers in the Conventual Franciscans.  Up to two thousand Jews would find sanctuary with him, but doing the right thing sometimes has a terrible price.

He had lived his life well within the accords of that white crown of purity, working to spread the Gospel and help those in need.  Now he would begin his march to the red crown of martyrdom.  On February 17, 1941 the Gestapo came for him and imprisoned him in the camp at Pawiak briefly before transferring him to the most infamous of the death camps on May 28th.  Prisoner number 16670 as he would come to be known was now in a place whose very name still conjures up the essence of evil after almost seven decades, Auschwitz.

The next two months would go by with Maximilian trying his best to celebrate the holy sacrifice of the Mass in his barracks in secret and singing devotional hymns to the Blessed Virgin Mary.  This changed in July when a man vanished from his barracks.  The Deputy Commander of the death camp called the men out to face him and he randomly selected ten of them to be starved to death in Block Thirteen; a symbol to deter further attempts at esape.  Tragically, the disappearance was entirely explainable, as the man was found drowned in a latrine not long after the decision to make an example was made.

One of those men who was chosen at random, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out about never seeing his wife and children again.  The time had come to accept death with dignity and to help his fellow man one final time.  Maximilian Kolbe would step forward from the line, an act that alone could have consigned him to death, "I wish to die for that man. I am old; he has a wife and children." The Deputy Commander was surprised and demanded to know who he was.  The proper answer would have been Prisoner Number 16670, a more daring answer might have been his name, but his answer spoke volumes, "I am a Catholic priest."

The Deputy Commander agreed to this request.  One by one the men in his starvation bunker died, despite the occasional bread from sympathetic guards that allowed the celebration of Mass.  It was an arduous process, but in the end, only Maximilian remained.  The door opened and on August 14, 1941, he offered his arm weakly to the Nazi physician who ended his life with an injection of carbolic acid.  In death, Maxmilian had recieved both of the crowns of his vision, that of purity and that of martyrdom.

His story, however, was not over.  Franciszek Gajowniczek would not allow the memory of the priest who had died for him to be forgotten and was present in 1971 when Pope Paul VI beatified Maximilian and again in 1982 when Pope John Paul II officially canonized Kolbe as a saint.  Franciszek would be released after five years, five months, and nine days in the death camp, his children for whom he had cried were dead, but his wife Helena still lived.  The man whose life was spared by the sacrifice of a saint would live on for fifty-three more years.

Every time he went to make a decision that had a major impact, he was told he couldn't do it, but he succeeded.  That was one of the things that attracted me at first to Saint Maximilian Kolbe.  However, the manner of his death is what continues to keep me spellbound.  This man offered himself just as Christ did for all of us, as a sacrifice to save another.  Just as Christ was tortured and killed, so too was Kolbe tortured in his own way, through starvation, prior to his execution.  In the end, I could think of no one else I'd rather hold up as a model of Christ-like behavior and upon whose intercession I would be able to call. 

Often our saints are people who are long dead.  However, people still walk this world who did when Maximilian Kolbe was still alive, and they would tell us the same thing is important.  That we do not forget the great evil that engulfed the world during their youth and that we continue to persevere against evil in all its forms today.  A popular turn of phrase is "hear no evil, see no evil", but I believe Maximilian Kolbe would agree more with someone who survived the camp where he died, Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel, "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."

No, we aren't going to stop sin and pain in this world, that is the province of God.  However, if we can do just one thing to combat it, we can make a difference.  That difference may not be large, but it is a witness to our faith and that we have not forgotten the lessons learned after that turbulent period.  Though, that difference, could end up larger than we could ever believe.  Seventy-one years ago today a Catholic priest died, weeks after offering himself as a replacement sacrifice for a man who statistically speaking should not have lived to see freedom again.  That man would continue living for more than half a century, would bury his wife eventually, find love again in his older years.  That man would continue to impact those around him.  Every life Franciszek Gajowniczek would touch, every moment he experienced, and all he did would have never ocurred if one man, one saint, would not have made a choice to combat the evil around him.

Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, ora pro nobis!