St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe (1894-1941)
He was born at Pabiance, in Russian Occupied Poland. He was baptized with the name Raymond at the Parish Church of Pabiance.
About the time of his First Holy Communion, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to him in 1906, about the time of his first communion, when he was around 12 years old.
During the time the Blessed Virgin was appearing to him, she offered him the graces of virginity and martyrdom and asked him which he wanted. Filled with zeal, he begged for both, and was filled thereafter with the most ardent desire to love and serve the Blessed Virgin Mary.
He joined the Order of Friars Minor Conventual at Lvov in Austrian Occupied Poland, where he took the name Maximilian, and after finishing preliminary studies he was sent to the Pontifical Seraphic University, (the Franciscan University), in Rome and the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University to pursue doctorates in philosophy and theology.
In 1917 on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the conversion of Alphonse Ratisbon, renowned anti-Catholic and agnostic of Jewish lineage, St. Maximilian was moved by divine grace to found a pious association of the faithful known as the Militia of the Immaculate. The Militia was to be a loosely organized tool in the hands of the Immaculate Mediatrix for the conversion and sanctification of non-Catholics, especially those inimical to the Church. Its members consecrated themselves to the Blessed Virgin Mary, invoked Her daily for the conversion of sinners, and strove by every licit means to build up the Kingdom of the Sacred Heart throughout the world.
Ordained to the priesthood on April 28, 1918, Father Maximilian returned to Poland to teach Church History at a seminary in Cracow in 1919, after being diagnosed with tuberculosis. After a nearly fatal attack he determined to organize the first group of the Militia outside of Italy, and to found a magazine for Christian readers in Cracow who needed effective apologetics.
The monthly magazine, "The Knight of Mary Immaculate" promoted the knowledge, love and service of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the conversion of all souls to Christ Our Lord. The magazine was an extraordinary success and soon the obsolete presses were moved to better facilities. Circulation increased from 5,000 copies to more than 45,000. After installing new presses, he became the biggest publisher of religious periodicals in Poland. His publication Knight of the Immaculate, reached a circulation of nearly a million shortly after new machinery was installed. The new presses were operated by priests and lay brothers. In spite of another attack of tuberculosis, Father Maximilian continued to promote the growth of the Militia and to manage the growth of the magazine.
The phenomenal growth of this apostolate led to the foundation of the first city of the Immaculate, Niepokalanow in 1929. This was a friary of Franciscan priests and brothers engaged in the use of all kinds of modern equipment so as to promote via the mass media the Militia through all parts of Poland.
Two years later, in 1930, St. Maximilian, heeding the call of the Holy Father to all religious, to come to the aid of the missionary efforts of the universal Church, volunteered to go to Japan to found another city of the Immaculate, Mugenzai No Sono. The second world war found St. Maximilian back in his native Poland, at Niepokalanow, the city of the Immaculate, that he had founded in 1927. Niepolalanow was a center for religious life and for various types of the apostolate, including the media.
After the invasion of Poland by the Germans on September 19, 1939, the friars dispersed and Niepokalanow was ransacked. St. Maximilian and about 40 others were taken to holding camps, first at Lamsdorf, Germany, and later to Amtitz, Poland. They were released and allowed to return home on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8, 1939. During the war the friars took care of about 5,000 Jewish refugees of the Poznan district as well as providing a repair shop for the farming machinery of the locale. To incriminate St. Maximilian, the Gestapo permitted one final printing of the Knight of the Immaculata in December of 1940. In February of 1941, they came to Niepokalanow and arrested St. Maximlian. He was taken to Pawiak Prison in Warsaw, Poland. Today in Warsaw, there is a museum that commemorates the Polish nationals who were held in Pawiak Prison in the 19th century as well as during World War II. Over the year of the Nazi occupation, 100,000 Poles were held here -- 35,000 were executed, and 60,000 were taken to the death camps.
Later, St. Maximilian Kolbe was transferred to Auschwitz, Poland, the Nazi's largest and most horrible death camp. The bizarre name on the arch as you enter Auschwitz says: Work Makes You Free. Upon entering Auschwitz, the prisoners were told that all Jews had the right to live only two weeks, Roman Catholic priests 1 month. At Auschwitz several million Jews were put to death along with another several million Catholics. The objective of Hitler, in his hatred for Jesus Christ, was both to remove all witness to the truth of the original revelation of the God of Israel (the Jewish nation), as well as all who came to believe in Him as born of the Virgin Mary. Thus, St. Maximilian Kolbe, was placed by Divine Providence at the very center of the ideologic and spiritual conflict of the century, and was destined by God to be the sign of contradiction to a nation given over to diabolic hatred of God and His people. St. Maximilian, in response to the vicious hatred and brutality of the prison guards, was ever obedient, meek, and forgiving. He gave counsel to all his fellow prisoners Trust in the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was noted for his generosity in surrendering his food despite the starvation that he suffered, for always going to the end of the line of the infirmary, despite the acute turberculosis afflicting him. In the end, by the maternal mediation of the Virgin Mary, he received the grace to be intimately conformed to Christ in death.
I found this letter on the internet from Jan Mokrzycki from England. Jan's mother had spent two years in Auschwitz.
Dear Dana,
As Tom has already said my Mother spent some 2 years in Auschwitz (Oswiecim),and then another year in Ravensbruck concentration camp. She was arrested by the Gestapo for working in the Polish underground together with my father, uncle and grandfather. All the men were murdered at the Pawiak prison, she was sentenced to death and sent to Aushwitz. Let me add that we are not Jewish but Polish, as so many of the concentration prisoners-victims were.
The sights and the sounds were awful, walking skeletons, dressed in rags. The worst thing was, she said, a total absence of any greenery and of birds. Yes, of course they hoped, it was the only way to keep alive, to hope and to try and shut out the present until a whip across your back brought it back .Mother always said she was lucky, as she was a doctor, not only did she have better accommodation and food, such as it was, but more importantly, she was able to achieve something by helping others a little. She maintained that the aimless work they were set by the guards was in many ways more of a torture, than torture itself. Hope this answers some of your questions, but if you want to know more do not hesitate to ask. jam
On the night of August 3, 1941 a prisoner successfully escaped from the same section in which St. Maximilian was held. In reprisal, the commandant ordered death by starvation for 10 men chosen at random from the same section. One of the condemned, Sergeant Franciszek Gajowniczek, shouted out, lamenting that he would never see his wife and children again. In his stead, St. Maximilian Kolbe, who had remained standing all night long during the selection of the condemned, stepped forward and offered his own life in exchange for this man. Ten days later, on August 14, 1941, having led the other 9 condemned prisoners in prayers and hymns, St. Maximilian was given a lethal injection of carbolic acid.
Pope Paul VI beatified St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe on October 17, 1971. Pope John Paul II canonized him a saint on October 10, 1982 as a martyr of charity.
During the beatification ceremony by Pope Paul VI on October 17, 1971, Pope Paul praised Maximilian Kolbe's veneration of Our Lady's Immaculate Conception.
His Veneration of the Immaculate Conception
Maximilian Kolbe was an apostle of the formal veneration of Mary seen in all her pristine splendor, in the original and privileged character of the definition she gave of herself at Lourdes: the Immaculate Conception. It is impossible to separate the name of Father Kolbe, his activity or his mission, from the name of Mary Immaculate. He founded the Militia Immaculatae here in Rome before he was even a priest, on October 16, 1917;... We all know how this humble, meek Franciscan, with incredible courage and extraordinary talent for organization, developed this initiative of his, and made of the devotion to the Mother of Christ, the Woman clothed with the sun, the center of his spirituality, his apostolate, and his theology. Let us not be reluctant to admire him, to adopt the watchword which the new blessed leaves us as his legacy, as though we feared that such zeal to honor Mary might clash with the other two theological and spiritual currents so prominent in today's religious thought and life: No competition here! In Father Kolbe's mind, Christ occupies not merely the first place, but strictly speaking, the only place necessary and sufficient for salvation. Nor is love for the Church and for her mission absent from the teaching or the apostolic endeavors of our new Blessed. For it is precisely from the way Mary completes and serves the universal plan of Christ for the salvation of all men that she draws all her prerogatives and all her greatness." (Pope Paul VI Discourse at Maximilian Kolbe's Beatification on October 17, 1971).
Father Richard Gant
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