Forget not love
I have been reading George Weigel’s biography of Pope John Paul II, and I wanted to take some time to share a reflection I may develop more later that resulted from my inevitable “skipping ahead” (wink!).
I wanted to read about the Pope’s relationship with (at a spiritual level - there is no evidence I can see from the book that he ever knew him, though their lives did overlap) with St. Maximilian Kolbe, who he canonized in 1982. In my younger years, I was deeply and publicly devoted to Father Kolbe, joining the Militia Immaculata, which was one of the many groups and devotions he established for the Blessed Virgin, and following the not particularly onerous procedures pursuant to the Militia to consecrate myself to the Blessed Virgin. I have thought back over what initially piqued my interest in Father Kolbe, but I honestly cannot remember. I was very influenced as a young person by a Ukrainian friend, and the places where Father Kolbe lived for some time and was educated are the parts of “Poland” that are now in Ukraine, but these were the interests that brought us together, not the opposite. I have written of my comparative detachment from the Church and my interests in Father Kolbe’s work, but some of that has come back, not directly but perhaps related to the Pope’s final illness and death. Last night, I was reading in Weigel’s book about the Pope’s first learning, as a young seminarian, of Father’s Kolbe’s death.
It is that death that probably gained the good Father the recognition and respect necessary for his ultimate canonization, but he would have been an admired figure in the Church regardless for his worldwide (literally - one wonders the Church’s flourishing in Asian countries can be traced partly back to him) promotion of devotion - and devotion is love - to the Blessed Virgin as a means to a deeper devotion to Christ himself. He was a prolific writer, published newspapers and magazines all over the world that became wildly popular and produced numerous closer relationships with Christ and conversions He also established whole communities founded on devotion to the Blessed Virgin in both Europe and in Asia. All this he did while fighting serious illness all his life and otherwise living a life of sincere humility; in a Europe of increasing harshness, intolerance and fascism, he must have seemed a pushover. One of the reasons I recoil at those who speak of modern democratic leaders as “fascists” or “Nazis” because those speakers do not like some of the things those leaders do is that in so doing, they trivialize the unspeakable horrors of those times. Just as a few choice tidbits, in that increasingly ugly society, priests were tortured, summarily shot en masse, and even drowned in feces, among other pleasant ends, simply for performing their pastoral duties.
What is probably most amazing is that Father Kolbe seemed to survive just beneath the radar screen so long, because he certainly was not taking any special steps to avoid what was his ultimate arrest and incarceration at Auschwitz. Many of you know this, but as you walk in, the sign assures you, “work makes free” - yet another reason I bristle at those who talk about doublespeak in the modern age; how can any inartful phrasing compare to such in that context. While Father Kolbe was incarcerated, he lived the special tortures to which he was inflicted as a sick priest as a special mission, yet another witness to the mercy of God. I am sanitizing this story for those with weak stomachs; google his name and you'll get all the gory details.
At some point, several prisoners escaped, and the rule was that a current prisoner would be murdered for every escapee. Among those chosen to die was a Jewish man, Francis Gajowniczek, who begged for mercy from the SS because he had a wife and child. At that point, Father Kolbe spoke up and asked to take Mr. Gajowniczek’s place, because he was single, old and sick, while Gajowniczek was young and had a family. The SS guard didn’t seem to care and allowed the substitution.
It is perhaps relevant to recent events how these ten victims were killed: they were isolated in a cell and starved to death. I would not draw any particular parallels between them and Terri Schiavo, because I see none to draw, but would point out only that those fears we had for Terri possibly experiencing that terrible, painful, violent death that one by starvation and thirst is, and our hopes that, in fact, she was wholly unable to feel and therefore did not experience that pain (perhaps her morphine did help) . . . these men felt the full horror of it. I wrote on my journal of the Irish doctor who lamented in a Terri-like case there that he could not imagine many worse deaths than by starvation and thirst: bear in mind, that is how these men died without morphine, without creature comforts, with the full experience of the pain drawn out slowly over several days.
In the death cell, Father Kolbe, whose body had been wracked with terrible illness all his life, tended his other dying cellmates, doing much to ensure that their deaths were as dignified as possible under those unspeakable conditions. He, however, seemed slow to die, in some respects experiencing a greater torture. After more than two weeks, when he was the only one left, he was still conscious, kneeling and praying long hours of the day, earning even the respect of the Nazi soldiers who guarded the cell and removed the various bodies. Finally, the Nazis shot him full of poison, and he passed.
During his 1979 visit to Poland, Pope John Paul II visited Father Kolbe’s death cell at Auschwitz. I was struck by the photo of him standing in the doorway in Weigel’s book; it is one of the few photos of him I ever saw where his face seemed thin, like an oval, lips pursed, stricken. Of course, the Pope lived through that time, too, involved in resistance activities, and going through an underground seminary, which, if discovered, would have resulted in his own death, which possibly would have been only slightly less gruesome. He met Mr. Gajowniczek there as well, still alive, having lived to find, protect and support at least his wife, which was one of the relationships of love for which Father Kolbe died. Mr. Gajowniczek may not be Catholic, but he provided substantial testimony and support for Father Kolbe’s canonization.
Father Kolbe’s canonization was pretty much assured long before Pope John Paul II became Pontiff. The only real question was whether he would be recognized officially as a martyr, though that was his implicit status with most laypersons. You’re not a martyr unless you die for or are killed because of your faith. There was just no evidence that the fact that Father Kolbe was a priest motivated the SS at all or that Father Kolbe was making any special proclamation of his faith in asking to be substituted for Mr. Gajowniczek in the death cell. The Pope was advised that Father Kolbe certainly should be canonized but that he could not be recognized as a martyr.
But at the last moment, the Pope decided to don the red robes that signal such recognition anyway. I do not have the exact words quoted in Weigel’s book here (I may edit later), but the reasoning was as follows, and it succinctly demonstrates one of the Pope’s contributions to our understanding of the inexorably relationship between the culture of life and the Church. If anyone, such as an SS guard, devalued life so much that he would dismissively kill ten innocents without thought and was so unable to recognize even a spark of humanity of those innocents that he could substitute one or the other completely dismissively and without compunction, as if those involved were nothing but blobs of cells, such a person had not just rejected any notion of the dignity of human life but had in fact rejected the Church, because that notion of the dignity of human life was so central to the Church’s teachings that rejecting one was rejecting the other and they could not be separated. It was this that made Father Kolbe a martyr and that recognition was a major development in our fuller understanding of the centrality of the culture of life to Church teaching.
“Forget not love” is the title of one of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s biographies and his message to the world, that he preached unceasingly, that he lived in in every aspect of his life, and that he made fully concrete and for the ages in the manner of his death. “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,” the Pope reminded us in words to that effect at Father Kolbe’s canonization. I am reminded again of the principle our priest explained on Easter Sunday: that the culture of life can only be seen as inexorably bound up with a culture of love. In the absence of one, the other has no meaning, and neither can be preserved without preservation of the other. They are the linked and separable foundation of everything else.
I wanted to read about the Pope’s relationship with (at a spiritual level - there is no evidence I can see from the book that he ever knew him, though their lives did overlap) with St. Maximilian Kolbe, who he canonized in 1982. In my younger years, I was deeply and publicly devoted to Father Kolbe, joining the Militia Immaculata, which was one of the many groups and devotions he established for the Blessed Virgin, and following the not particularly onerous procedures pursuant to the Militia to consecrate myself to the Blessed Virgin. I have thought back over what initially piqued my interest in Father Kolbe, but I honestly cannot remember. I was very influenced as a young person by a Ukrainian friend, and the places where Father Kolbe lived for some time and was educated are the parts of “Poland” that are now in Ukraine, but these were the interests that brought us together, not the opposite. I have written of my comparative detachment from the Church and my interests in Father Kolbe’s work, but some of that has come back, not directly but perhaps related to the Pope’s final illness and death. Last night, I was reading in Weigel’s book about the Pope’s first learning, as a young seminarian, of Father’s Kolbe’s death.
It is that death that probably gained the good Father the recognition and respect necessary for his ultimate canonization, but he would have been an admired figure in the Church regardless for his worldwide (literally - one wonders the Church’s flourishing in Asian countries can be traced partly back to him) promotion of devotion - and devotion is love - to the Blessed Virgin as a means to a deeper devotion to Christ himself. He was a prolific writer, published newspapers and magazines all over the world that became wildly popular and produced numerous closer relationships with Christ and conversions He also established whole communities founded on devotion to the Blessed Virgin in both Europe and in Asia. All this he did while fighting serious illness all his life and otherwise living a life of sincere humility; in a Europe of increasing harshness, intolerance and fascism, he must have seemed a pushover. One of the reasons I recoil at those who speak of modern democratic leaders as “fascists” or “Nazis” because those speakers do not like some of the things those leaders do is that in so doing, they trivialize the unspeakable horrors of those times. Just as a few choice tidbits, in that increasingly ugly society, priests were tortured, summarily shot en masse, and even drowned in feces, among other pleasant ends, simply for performing their pastoral duties.
What is probably most amazing is that Father Kolbe seemed to survive just beneath the radar screen so long, because he certainly was not taking any special steps to avoid what was his ultimate arrest and incarceration at Auschwitz. Many of you know this, but as you walk in, the sign assures you, “work makes free” - yet another reason I bristle at those who talk about doublespeak in the modern age; how can any inartful phrasing compare to such in that context. While Father Kolbe was incarcerated, he lived the special tortures to which he was inflicted as a sick priest as a special mission, yet another witness to the mercy of God. I am sanitizing this story for those with weak stomachs; google his name and you'll get all the gory details.
At some point, several prisoners escaped, and the rule was that a current prisoner would be murdered for every escapee. Among those chosen to die was a Jewish man, Francis Gajowniczek, who begged for mercy from the SS because he had a wife and child. At that point, Father Kolbe spoke up and asked to take Mr. Gajowniczek’s place, because he was single, old and sick, while Gajowniczek was young and had a family. The SS guard didn’t seem to care and allowed the substitution.
It is perhaps relevant to recent events how these ten victims were killed: they were isolated in a cell and starved to death. I would not draw any particular parallels between them and Terri Schiavo, because I see none to draw, but would point out only that those fears we had for Terri possibly experiencing that terrible, painful, violent death that one by starvation and thirst is, and our hopes that, in fact, she was wholly unable to feel and therefore did not experience that pain (perhaps her morphine did help) . . . these men felt the full horror of it. I wrote on my journal of the Irish doctor who lamented in a Terri-like case there that he could not imagine many worse deaths than by starvation and thirst: bear in mind, that is how these men died without morphine, without creature comforts, with the full experience of the pain drawn out slowly over several days.
In the death cell, Father Kolbe, whose body had been wracked with terrible illness all his life, tended his other dying cellmates, doing much to ensure that their deaths were as dignified as possible under those unspeakable conditions. He, however, seemed slow to die, in some respects experiencing a greater torture. After more than two weeks, when he was the only one left, he was still conscious, kneeling and praying long hours of the day, earning even the respect of the Nazi soldiers who guarded the cell and removed the various bodies. Finally, the Nazis shot him full of poison, and he passed.
During his 1979 visit to Poland, Pope John Paul II visited Father Kolbe’s death cell at Auschwitz. I was struck by the photo of him standing in the doorway in Weigel’s book; it is one of the few photos of him I ever saw where his face seemed thin, like an oval, lips pursed, stricken. Of course, the Pope lived through that time, too, involved in resistance activities, and going through an underground seminary, which, if discovered, would have resulted in his own death, which possibly would have been only slightly less gruesome. He met Mr. Gajowniczek there as well, still alive, having lived to find, protect and support at least his wife, which was one of the relationships of love for which Father Kolbe died. Mr. Gajowniczek may not be Catholic, but he provided substantial testimony and support for Father Kolbe’s canonization.
Father Kolbe’s canonization was pretty much assured long before Pope John Paul II became Pontiff. The only real question was whether he would be recognized officially as a martyr, though that was his implicit status with most laypersons. You’re not a martyr unless you die for or are killed because of your faith. There was just no evidence that the fact that Father Kolbe was a priest motivated the SS at all or that Father Kolbe was making any special proclamation of his faith in asking to be substituted for Mr. Gajowniczek in the death cell. The Pope was advised that Father Kolbe certainly should be canonized but that he could not be recognized as a martyr.
But at the last moment, the Pope decided to don the red robes that signal such recognition anyway. I do not have the exact words quoted in Weigel’s book here (I may edit later), but the reasoning was as follows, and it succinctly demonstrates one of the Pope’s contributions to our understanding of the inexorably relationship between the culture of life and the Church. If anyone, such as an SS guard, devalued life so much that he would dismissively kill ten innocents without thought and was so unable to recognize even a spark of humanity of those innocents that he could substitute one or the other completely dismissively and without compunction, as if those involved were nothing but blobs of cells, such a person had not just rejected any notion of the dignity of human life but had in fact rejected the Church, because that notion of the dignity of human life was so central to the Church’s teachings that rejecting one was rejecting the other and they could not be separated. It was this that made Father Kolbe a martyr and that recognition was a major development in our fuller understanding of the centrality of the culture of life to Church teaching.
“Forget not love” is the title of one of Saint Maximilian Kolbe’s biographies and his message to the world, that he preached unceasingly, that he lived in in every aspect of his life, and that he made fully concrete and for the ages in the manner of his death. “There is no greater love than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend,” the Pope reminded us in words to that effect at Father Kolbe’s canonization. I am reminded again of the principle our priest explained on Easter Sunday: that the culture of life can only be seen as inexorably bound up with a culture of love. In the absence of one, the other has no meaning, and neither can be preserved without preservation of the other. They are the linked and separable foundation of everything else.