Death Out Of Love

Christ on the Cross, Eugene Delacroix, 1853

Today the Church celebrates the feast of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, who was canonized by Saint John Paul II in 1982.

A Polish Franciscan with a deep devotion to Mary, Kolbe gave his own life for a fellow prisoner at the Auschwitz extermination camp, taking on the man's punishment of death by starvation because he had a wife and children. Not only this, but the saint also gave life to others in the camp, reminding them of their dignity as persons and that hope was not yet lost. Kolbe is particularly remembered for leading the nine others condemned to starvation in Marian hymns and the Rosary as they awaited their death.

St. John Paul II had a deep devotion to Maximilian Kolbe, and his sacrifice in the heart of darkness gave the late Holy Father much hope as he discerned his own vocation in war torn Poland. Kolbe’s Christ-like gift of self stood as a model of priesthood for him, and the Franciscan's hope in the midst of hatred inspired a renewed respect for the dignity of the human person in a place and a time in which it seemed to have been forgotten.

A Victory Like That Of Christ Himself

During this week of the feast of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, let us reflect on Blessed John Paul II’s words at Brezezinka Concentration Camp:

"This is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith" (1 Jn 5:4).

These words from the Letter of Saint John come to my mind and enter my heart as I find myself in this place in which a special victory was won through faith; through the faith that gives rise to love of God and of one's neighbor, the unique love, the supreme love that is ready to "lay down (one's) life for (one's) friends" (Jn 15:13; cf. 10:11). A victory, therefore, through love enlivened by faith to the extreme point of the final definitive witness.

This victory through faith and love was won in this place by a man whose first name is Maximilian Mary. Surname: Kolbe. Profession (as registered in the books of the concentration camp): Catholic priest. Vocation: a son of Saint Francis. Birth: a son of simple, hardworking devout parents, who were weavers near Lódz. By God's grace and the Church's judgment: Blessed.

The victory through faith and love was won by him in this place, which was built for the negation of faith—faith in God and faith in man—and to trample radically not only on love but on all signs of human dignity, of humanity. A place built on hatred and on contempt for man in the name of a crazed ideology. A place built on cruelty. On the entrance gate which still exists, is placed the inscription "Arbeit macht frei", which has a sardonic sound, since its meaning was radically contradicted by what took place within.

In this site of the terrible slaughter that brought death to four million people of different nations, Father Maximilian voluntarily offered himself for death in the starvation bunker for a brother, and so won a spiritual victory like that of Christ himself. This brother still lives today in the land of Poland.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, Pray for Us!

The Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe

The reality of death through martyrdom is always a torment; but, the secret of that death is the fact that God is greater than the torment. So then, we have before us a martyr—Maximilian Kolbe—the minister of his own death—stronger still in his love, to which he was faithful, in which he grew throughout his life, in which he matured in the camp at Auschwitz…That maturing of love which filled the whole life of Fr. Maximilian and reached its definitive fulfillment on Polish soil in the act at Auschwitz, that maturing was linked in a special way to the Immaculate Handmaid of the Lord….

Maximilian Kolbe, like few others, was filled with the mystery of the divine election of Mary. His heart and his thoughts were concentrated in a particular way upon that ‘new beginning,’ which—through the work of the Redeemer—was signified by the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of his earthly incarnation…Maximilian Kolbe penetrated this mystery in a particularly profound way and complete way: not in the abstract, but in the life-filled context of the Triune God, Son and Holy Spirit, and in the life-filled context of the divine salvific plan for the world….Once there arose, in the Middle Ages, the legend of St. Stanislaus. Our time, our age will not create a legend of St. Maximilian. The eloquence of the facts themselves, the testimony of his life and martyrdom, is strong enough.

-Blessed John Paul II, who canonized St. Maximilian Kolbe on October 10, 1982 (Matthew and Margaret Bunson, John Paul II’s Book of Saints, 118).

St. Maximilian Kolbe, who refused to let the Nazis take your soul and instead gave up your life on Earth out of love for another, pray for us!