MEMORIAL ST MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, PRIEST AND MARTYR, WEDNESDAY OF THE NINETEENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME, AUGUST 14, 2024

1894-1941

MASS READINGS:

Gospel

Mt 18:15-20

Jesus said to his disciples: "If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother .If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that  every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the Church. If he refuses to listen even to the Church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector. Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

REFLECTION

"For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."

I love my Catholic faith. Where would you learn about saints who travelled this earth, lived during wars and became saints. They are a great example on how to live a life for God.

We all know St Maximilian Kolbe. He was born Raymond Kolbe in occupied Poland in 1894. His mother taught him to love the Immaculate Mary. Full of young one's pranks, he finally upset his mother who said, "I do not know what will become of you". Shortly after that incident he was a changed child. What she said to him upset him so much, that he went to talk with the Blessed Mother about what was to become of him. Mother Mary appeared to him with two crowns. One was white for purity and the other red for martyrdom. St Maximilian Kolbe chose to wear both crowns.

He entered the Franciscan minor seminary and eventually was ordained in 1918 taking the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

He vowed to be a Knight for the Immaculata, to win souls for her as a soldier on the field of battle. He believed that Christians must fight for the world's salvation with all the means of modern communication. He founded a newspaper which spread in Poland and abroad. He set out to evangelize. He travelled throughout the world. One particular place was Nagasaki, where he set up a "Garden of the Immaculate" missions which survived the atomic bomb.

He was arrested in 1941 by the Nazis for being a Christian, for hiding Polish people from the Nazis and for operating an underground radio witnessing about Jesus. He was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp where he helped the inmates. A prisoner escaped and in reprisal, 10 inmates were ordered to die by starvation. One of the ten had a family and St Maximilian Kolbe offered to take his place. He survived for two week without food or drink. He was the last survivor of the ten and died from a lethan injection.

We most likely will not be in that position to offer to die for someone else, but we come to respect this saint because of who he was and what he did. His work had been to do the will of God and to bring souls to God through the Immaculata.

Jesus was certainly present with him in Auschwitz as he mentored, heard confessions and finally offered his life for a stranger.

“every fall, even if it be very grave and repeated, serves us always and only as a little step towards a higher perfection.”

(St Maximilian Kolbe)

God Bless You

(1) St Maximilian Kolbe by Father Jeremiah F. Scott, CFM

(2) A Saint a Day, by Meredith Hinds.