St Maximilian Kolbe – 14 August
By Catherine Sheehan
Polish priest St Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) was a man who understood that life is a constant spiritual battle between good and evil. From an early age he dedicated himself entirely to serving God and was willing to sacrifice himself in the cause of good.
The manner of his death at Auschwitz during the Second World War was evidence of this.
Born Raymund Kolbe on 8 January 1894 in Zduńska Wola, Poland, his life changed forever when at 12 years of age the Virgin Mary appeared to him. He later recounted:
“That night I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.”
From then on, he had a steadfast life-long devotion to Our Lady.
He joined the Conventual Franciscans in 1907 when he was only 13, taking the religious name of Maximilian, and was ordained a priest in 1918.
He founded the Knights of the Immaculata, a Marian movement dedicated to the conversion of sinners to Jesus through Mary. He began a monthly publication called The Knight of the Immaculata with a circulation of over 50,000.
Such was his love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary that he founded a town in her honour and established a Franciscan monastery there. Not far from Warsaw, the town was named Niepokalanow, meaning “City of the Immaculata”. His friary became a major religious publishing house.
During the Second World War Kolbe began to publish content critical of the Nazis and he hid 2,000 Jews in his monastery.
In February 1941 Kolbe was arrested by the Nazis and taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In July of the same year a camp prisoner escaped and as a punishment the commandant decided that ten men would be starved to death. One of the men selected, Franciszek Gajowniczek, was a husband and father who became distraught at the thought of not being able to return to his wife and children. Maximilian stepped forward and said “I want to take his place”. When the astonished commandant asked who he was Kolbe simply responded, “I am a Catholic priest”.
Kolbe and the other nine men were starved to death in an underground bunker. Throughout the ordeal Kolbe led the other men in praying and the guards would often see him kneeling in prayer. After two weeks with no food or water, only Kolbe and three others were still alive. He died on 14 August 1941 after a nurse gave him a lethal injection of carbolic acid.
His final words were, “Ave Maria”.