St. Maximilian Kolbe

Dearest Ones,

One of the first things I do each morning is to read the life of the saint of the day. When I have questions or concerns, I often turn to the saints as I would to any other friend. When we are lonely, we need to remember we are never alone. Jesus, Mary, all the saints, and all the angels are always with us.

Don't be afraid or think the saints may reject you. When I need courage I call on one of the more recent saints, St. Maximilian Kolbe, born in Poland in 1894. As a child, he was naughty and gave his mother a lot of grief. His mother once said, "I don't know what's going to become of you." How many parents have said that? Maximilian prayed so much to Our Mother Mary to help him. She appeared to him, holding in her hands two crowns, one white, one read. She asked if he would like to have them - one was for purity, the other for martyrdom. He said, "I choose both." After that he was never the same.

Ordained at 24, he felt called to start a new Order of priests devoted to making the truths of our faith known through the written word. His order, under the care of our Blessed Mother Mary, distributes the printed word through magazines which brings the truth to people all over the world. In 1939 the Nazis overran Poland with deadly speed. Their purpose was to stamp out the Catholic faith through capturing the leaders first. Naturally, they went after Maximilian and soon he was put into a concentration camp in Auschwitz.

After spending three months in this horrible place, a prisoner had escaped and as a result the guards decided that ten of the other prisoners should be starved to death. The guard walked through the line-up of prisoners, choosing ten prisoners at random. As the men walked away to the starvation bunker, suddenly Fr. Kolbe dared to step out saying, "I would like to take that man's place. He has a wife and children." The guard was dumbfounded that any man would volunteer to do this for another. But he then ordered Fr. Kolbe to join the other nine to go to the place of death and the prisoner with the family was allowed to live. The men were ordered to strip naked and the slow starvation began in darkness. Ordinarily, those who were sentenced to this cell, either went mad, tried to commit suicide or died cursing God. But soon the guards heard singing and prayers coming from the cell. There was no screaming, as is usually the case in the hunger cells.

Fr. Kolbe had turned this horrible cell into a place of worship and peace. As each man died, the priest heard their confession and anointed them. One by one the jailers removed the dead bodies until finally only Fr. Kolbe was alive, still praising God. Mercifully, the jailer came into the cell with a hypodermic needle full of carbolic acid and ended his torture in 1944. A Polish guard survived to tell the story of Fr. Kolbe's last hours. Fr. Kolbe must have been fearful when he offered his life for another, but his courage and faith triumphed over his fear. Nothing I will ever face will be nearly so bad as what Fr. Kolbe endured - I remember him when I am afraid.

Who of us does not know what it is like to be afraid? Only when we allow God's own courage to fill our hearts can we face our greatest fears. After the war ended, the man whose place Fr. Kolbe took, went on a speaking tour all over Poland, letting people know about this great hero. Fr. Kolbe's death was not a sudden, last-minute act of self-sacrifice, His whole life had been a preparation. His aim was to convert the whole world. This is why he said to his fellow-prisoners: "Courage, my brothers. What a privilege is ours! We must pray and offer our lives in order to win as many souls as possible. Let us, then, tell Jesus that we are content to allow Him to do anything He wishes."

Fr. Kolbe was canonized in 1982 by Pope John Paul 11. As he prayed in the cell where Fr. Kolbe died, the Pope lit a candle, which burns there, day and night in honor of this great man.

You and I probably won't be called to suffer hunger like Fr. Kolbe, because we are not called to do this. No two of us is the same. God made us unique and calls us to do what we can with the talents He gave us. We must not try to be just like someone else because we do not have the same gifts. Trying to be just like someone else can destroy us and make us depressed. God does have a plan for your life and He gave you just the right amount of talents and gifts to accomplish what He has planned. If we pray, we will find what it is that He wants from us. He loves us so much. Did you know the Bible says God had a plan for you even before you were born? "Before you were even in your mother's womb, He knew all about you!" -Jeremiah 1:5

With love and blessings,

Sister Francelle