Today is the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, (1894-1941), martyred at Auschwitz
"This I command you, to love one another"
August 14, 2006, 13:32
*†ç
Today is the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, fittingly a wartime Saint, a Polish priest, a countryman of Sister Faustina Kowalska of the Divine Mercy and John-Paul II. He was martyred at Auschwitz by taking the place of another prisoner who had a family.
Amazingly, Father Kolbe founded a Marian mission and a newspaper in Nagasaki in 1930.
The mission survived the atomic bombing. Father Kolbe is the only man who lived and worked in both of these WWII's killings fields across the divide of front-lines.
God does not take sides, but stands with the suffering and dying, sending His angel-saints of Mercy to bring HIs Hope, His Peace.
Today's Lectionary is another prophetic one,
a recipe for Peace,
an indictment of hateful men ("He who hates his brother is a murderer", it does not get stronger than that - the wages of hatred are death ),
a reading amazingly embodied by the very life story of Saint Maximilian who loved his Polish, Jewish, Japanese and German brothers all the same, as outlined below.
1 John 3:13-18: " He who does not love abides in death.
15 Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
17 But if any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth."
St. Maximillian was born in Lodz, Poland in 1894. He entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans in 1910.
In 1927, he began building a whole town with property donated by a wealthy nobleman, called the "Town of the Immaculate," outside of Warsaw. There he began training people with vocations among the laity and prospective Religious and Priests, to become apostles of Mary.
The first Marian Missionaries to Japan were trained in the "Town of the Immaculate." In 1930, Maximillian opened a Marian publication apostolate in Nagasaki, Japan one of the two cities in Japan which would later be ravaged by a nuclear bomb during the Second World War.
As popes have been saying ever since, God chose His most faithful people as a sacrifice to insure future peace in the world.
In 1939, Maximillian was arrested by the Nazis who had taken over Poland and sent to Auschwitz. Over the entrance gate of this concentration camp was a sign in German: Arbeit macht frei - "Work makes you free," a mockery of human spirit and human endeavors. Few who passed through that gate left the camp alive.
Upon entering Auschwitz, Camp Commandant Karl Fritsch ("Butcher" Fritsch) told prisoners that Jews had the right to live only two weeks, and Roman Catholic priests one month. Cruelly, they were told that the only way out of the camp was through the chimneys of the crematorium.
Father Maximilian received the striped convict garment and was tattooed with the number 16670. He was put to work immediately carrying blocks of stone for the construction of a crematorium wall.
Two years later, in July of 1941, at Block Fourteen, where Saint Maximilian was being kept, a prisoner escaped. All the prisoners from the block were assembled to stand at attention the whole day. If, by the end of the day, the escapee had not been recovered, ten others would be chosen at random to die in his place.
By three o'clock the prisoner was still not found. One of the ten chosen to die was Francis Gajowniczek. Mr. Gajowniczek cried out, "My poor wife, my poor children! What will happen to my family!" That is when Fr. Kolbe came forward, asked to exchange places with Gajowniczek and took the place of the condemned man.
Father Kolbe was sent to the starvation bunker. He lead those with him in prayer. After two weeks, he was still alive. On the morning of August 14, 1941 a lethal dose of carbolic acid was injected into him.
He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982.
East window, Chapel of
St Maximilian Kolbe with
St Edith Stein and the Holocaust Martyrs
Today's gospel - written again by John, as the epistle above - further echoes the message of love and devotion which binds us together.
John 15: 12 - 17
12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 This I command you, to love one another.
Some say it is unreasonable to be courteous and gentle with a reckless person who insults you for no reason at all. I have made a pact with my tongue; not to speak when my heart is disturbed.
-- St. Francis de Sales
August 14, 2006, 13:32
*†ç
Today is the Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, fittingly a wartime Saint, a Polish priest, a countryman of Sister Faustina Kowalska of the Divine Mercy and John-Paul II. He was martyred at Auschwitz by taking the place of another prisoner who had a family.
Amazingly, Father Kolbe founded a Marian mission and a newspaper in Nagasaki in 1930.
The mission survived the atomic bombing. Father Kolbe is the only man who lived and worked in both of these WWII's killings fields across the divide of front-lines.
God does not take sides, but stands with the suffering and dying, sending His angel-saints of Mercy to bring HIs Hope, His Peace.
Today's Lectionary is another prophetic one,
a recipe for Peace,
an indictment of hateful men ("He who hates his brother is a murderer", it does not get stronger than that - the wages of hatred are death ),
a reading amazingly embodied by the very life story of Saint Maximilian who loved his Polish, Jewish, Japanese and German brothers all the same, as outlined below.
1 John 3:13-18: " He who does not love abides in death.
15 Any one who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
17 But if any one has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth."
St. Maximillian was born in Lodz, Poland in 1894. He entered the novitiate of the Conventual Franciscans in 1910.
In 1927, he began building a whole town with property donated by a wealthy nobleman, called the "Town of the Immaculate," outside of Warsaw. There he began training people with vocations among the laity and prospective Religious and Priests, to become apostles of Mary.
The first Marian Missionaries to Japan were trained in the "Town of the Immaculate." In 1930, Maximillian opened a Marian publication apostolate in Nagasaki, Japan one of the two cities in Japan which would later be ravaged by a nuclear bomb during the Second World War.
As popes have been saying ever since, God chose His most faithful people as a sacrifice to insure future peace in the world.
In 1939, Maximillian was arrested by the Nazis who had taken over Poland and sent to Auschwitz. Over the entrance gate of this concentration camp was a sign in German: Arbeit macht frei - "Work makes you free," a mockery of human spirit and human endeavors. Few who passed through that gate left the camp alive.
Upon entering Auschwitz, Camp Commandant Karl Fritsch ("Butcher" Fritsch) told prisoners that Jews had the right to live only two weeks, and Roman Catholic priests one month. Cruelly, they were told that the only way out of the camp was through the chimneys of the crematorium.
Father Maximilian received the striped convict garment and was tattooed with the number 16670. He was put to work immediately carrying blocks of stone for the construction of a crematorium wall.
Two years later, in July of 1941, at Block Fourteen, where Saint Maximilian was being kept, a prisoner escaped. All the prisoners from the block were assembled to stand at attention the whole day. If, by the end of the day, the escapee had not been recovered, ten others would be chosen at random to die in his place.
By three o'clock the prisoner was still not found. One of the ten chosen to die was Francis Gajowniczek. Mr. Gajowniczek cried out, "My poor wife, my poor children! What will happen to my family!" That is when Fr. Kolbe came forward, asked to exchange places with Gajowniczek and took the place of the condemned man.
Father Kolbe was sent to the starvation bunker. He lead those with him in prayer. After two weeks, he was still alive. On the morning of August 14, 1941 a lethal dose of carbolic acid was injected into him.
He was canonized by Pope John Paul II on October 10, 1982.
East window, Chapel of
St Maximilian Kolbe with
St Edith Stein and the Holocaust Martyrs
Today's gospel - written again by John, as the epistle above - further echoes the message of love and devotion which binds us together.
John 15: 12 - 17
12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide; so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
17 This I command you, to love one another.
Some say it is unreasonable to be courteous and gentle with a reckless person who insults you for no reason at all. I have made a pact with my tongue; not to speak when my heart is disturbed.
-- St. Francis de Sales