Prayer to St. Maximilian
O St. Maximilian Kolbe, faithful follower of St. Francis, inflamed by
the love of God you dedicated your life to the practice of virtue and
to works of the apostolate. Look down with favor upon us who devoutly
confide in your intercession. Having consecrated yourself to the
Immaculate Virgin Mary, you inspired countless souls to a holy life and
various forms of the apostolate in order to do good to others and to
spread the kingdom of God. Obtain for us the grace by our lives and
labors to draw many souls to Christ.
In your close conformity to our Divine Savior you reached such an
intense degree of love that you offered your life to save a fellow
prisoner. Implore God that we, inflamed by such ardent charity, may
through our living faith and our apostolic works witness Christ to
others, and thus merit to join you in the blessed vision of God. Amen.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Our Lady especially loves little children. They are so guileless, so direct.
Their faith is so simple and chaste, their hope so aspiring and
inspiring, their charity so warm and sincere, that She could not help
but love them above the rest of men. No doubt that is why She so often
chooses them to convey Her heavenly messages to the world.
But sometimes Her apparitions to children are meant to be very
private and very intimate. One such highly personal visitation occurred
shortly after the turn of the present century.
It happened in Poland. The ten year-old child who received this
exceptional blessing was not exceptional himself – at least not in
virtue. For he was as mischievous as any other boy of his age. Perhaps
even more so. His name was Raymond Kolbe, born January 8, 1894. But
while he might not have been called exceptional, neither was he average.
Raymond was a bright little fellow with a notable inclination toward
science.
Unfortunately his talents were applied to common mischief far too
frequently to suit the patience of his poor mother, and he received many
a just reprimand from her. Exasperated, she one day intoned that
typical expression which many a weary mother has used dozens of times
over: “What is going to become of you?” she asked her youthful
prankster. Poor Raymond took the question quite to heart, gravely
reflecting on the implication that his habits of misbehavior were
leading him to a disastrous end. So moved was he, in fact, that a
complete change came over him from that moment.
And it was very noticeable. Maria Kolbe began to observe her son
spending long hours at their little altar of Our Lady of Czestochowa
praying and weeping. Naturally concerned about what was troubling the
boy, she asked him what was the matter. Raymond was reluctant to open
his heart until his worried mother insisted that he tell her under pain
of disobedience. Then he confided that her critical question about the
hope for his future had been the start of it all: “I felt very sad and
went to the Blessed Virgin and asked Her what would become of me. After
that, I asked Her again in church. Then the Blessed Virgin appeared to
me, holding two crowns. One was white, and the other red.” The white
crown represented purity, and the red one martyrdom. Our lady then asked
him which he would choose. “I choose them both,” was his eager answer.
The Queen of Heaven then smiled and disappeared.
Thus Maria Kolbe became the only person to share the beautiful secret
of this future saint before his death. And having been taken into his
confidence, she related years later, “His face aglow, he would often
talk to me of martyrdom, his great dream.”
But how was this dream to be fulfilled? The vision was brief, and the
only apparent instruction that Our Lady gave Raymond was that he be
obedient and She would take care of everything else.
The Religious Life
Jules and Maria Kolbe were a poor Polish couple. Poverty, for that
matter, was a national characteristic of oppressed Poland in those days
when the pitiable country was torn apart and its remnants divided among
three neighboring powers. The Kolbes therefore had no money to send
their three sons to school, and had to teach the boys elementary reading
and writing from their own humble literary abilities. Francis was the
oldest of the children and naturally he was entitled to whatever
educational privileges might become possible in the household, So when
it was decided that Francis would enter the seminary, the rest of the
family prepared themselves to make every sacrifice necessary to achieve
that ambition. This meant that Raymond, who was the second oldest, would
have to remain at home and help in his father’s trade.
But the Blessed Mother had other plans for her young visionary. A
local pharmacist was impressed by the precocious lad, and volunteered to
tutor him. With the help of this chemist-angel, Raymond was able to
join his older brother who was attending the secondary school at
Leopoli.
Before long the two were admitted to a minor seminary in Galicia, run
by Conventual Franciscans. Their younger brother Joseph followed them
three years later. Then, with all three of their children in the
seminary, both parents decided to enter religious life and devote
themselves to God.
Raymond meanwhile developed a brilliant aptitude for studies,
particularly excelling in mathematics and physics. Even during his years
at the minor seminary, he already was formulating designs for
interplanetary flight-designs that he would continue to perfect in his
spare time until they were feasibly workable. Father Bronislaus Stryczny
remembered years later: “He told me many times that flight to the moon
is possible and that he expected to see it in his own lifetime….His own
plans which he drew up were so plausible and well worked out that one of
his professors suggested that he patent them.” This inventive genius
was to be a great blessing later in his career.
In 1910 he was received into the novitiate of the Conventual
Franciscans, taking the name Maximilian as a religious. And the
following year, after making his temporary profession, he was sent to
study philosophy at Krakow, Poland, where his superiors, realizing his
exceptional capabilities, decided to have him complete his studies at
Rome. There he had the happy opportunity of seeing Pope Pius X in public
audiences, although probably neither saint was aware at the time that
another one was present. Friar Maximilian studied at the Gregorian
Institute and the International Seraphic College, where he was to earn
his doctorates in philosophy and theology. In 1914 he took his solemn
vows, adding “Maria” to his religious name. Four years later he was
ordained to the priesthood.
Militia of the Immaculate Mother
The education that Saint Maximilian acquired in Rome was considerably
more than what could be gotten in classrooms or from textbooks, and not
always was it edifying. He had come there quite innocent of the ways of
the world, only to be rudely awakened to the painful realities of the
modern times.
Modernism, though now exposed and condemned by the great Pope Saint
Pius X, still left enough of its atmosphere lingering in the Eternal
City to show its widespread effects on the thinking within the Church.
Reflecting on those times many years later, Father Kolbe recalled: “I
would often talk with my confreres about the lack of enthusiasm of some
within the Order and about the future of the Order. It was then that
these words were impressed on my mind: ‘Refuse to compromise, or we will
destroy the Order!’ ” For, as one of his associates commented, “Even as
a student Maximilian Kolbe felt it was necessary to repel the trend
against the Traditions of the Church in order to help men find their way
to God.”
At the same time there were the increasingly brazen and blasphemous
outrages of the Communists and the Masons directed against the Faith.
Conspicuous among them was the ugly spectacle of militant thugs
celebrating the secondary centenary of Freemasonry by marching on the
Holy City, and waving signs that read: “Satan must reign in the Vatican.
The Pope will be his slave.”
Deeply grieved by many other symptoms that the Church steadily was
losing ground in her battle against the devil, and fired by his
naturally warrior-like spirit, Saint Maximilian had already determined
in his heart to organize a spiritual army to capture souls for the
Immaculate Queen. That inspiration came to him in 1917 on the
anniversary of Our Lady’s apparition to Alphonse Ratisbonne, a Jew who
was converted through the Miraculous Medal. But his ideas Had no real
shape before he personally witnessed the sacrileges of Satan’s
disciples. The holy man recounts this experience: “The Freemasons began
to spark their demonstrations with more and more effrontery, even
raising their banners under the windows of the Vatican – banners which
depicted on a black background Lucifer trampling underfoot the Archangel
Michael. When they started to distribute vicious tracts against the
Holy Father, the idea to establish a company to fight the Freemasons and
other agents of Lucifer was born.”
The specific aim of this company, this Militia of the Immaculata, he
said, would be “to convert sinners, heretics, and especially Masons, and
to sanctify all under the patronage and through the intercession of the
Immaculate Virgin Mary.” (Saint Maximilian later preferred the phrase
“enemies of the Church,” over “Masons” so as to include Communists and
all other groups besides Masons who sought her ruin.) To be a Knight of
the holy Militia would require “total consecration of self to the
Immaculate Virgin Mary as an implement in Her Immaculate hands” and
“wearing the Miraculous Medal.”
Membership in the Militia Immaculatae eventually would be open to
people from all walks of life. But for his first select recruits Friar
Maximilian turned to his Franciscan confreres. “A bishop [Bishop
Francesco Maria Berti] has said that Our Lady will do great things
through one of our friars,” he told at least one prospect. “She will
renew the religious spirit in many more hearts in our Order and in other
Orders. And much more” She will reawaken the Christian spirit among the
faithful of many nations.” Father Alberto Arzilli recalls, “I, who by
then knew him and believed him a saint, was convinced that this
religious, this instrument chosen by Our Lady for such great work had to
be Friar Maximilian himself.”
On October 16, 1917, Saint Maximilian and his six founding members
quietly met and enrolled themselves as Knights of the Immaculata. The
meeting was strikingly similar in many respects to one that took place
four hundred years earlier in a small chapel on Montmartre, where Saint
Ignatius net with six divinity students and founded the Society of
Jesus. But particularly mystical was the fact that this founding meeting
of the Militia Immaculatae was held three days after the miracle of the
sun had occurred at Fatima, where the Blessed Mother promised the
conversion of Russia and the triumph of Her Immaculate Heart. Young
Kolbe was unaware of the great miracle at the time. But he himself was
to predict late in his life: “One day, you will see the statue of the
Immaculata in the center of Moscow atop the Kremlin.”
The Militia in Action
Saint Maximilian humbly left all major decisions of strategy for the
Militia to Our Lady, and now patiently awaited the directives She would
reveal to him in Her usual inconspicuous way and at Her own good time.
Meanwhile, he and his fellow Knights would concentrate on recruiting new
members and spreading devotion to the Miraculous Medal. All his life
the saint carried a pocketful of the medals-”bullets” he called them.
Whenever he went among the public, he seized every opportunity for
making a convert. And after giving some soul the challenge of the Faith,
he would present the person with a Miraculous Medal, leaving it to Our
Lady to finish the job.
Penance was another powerful weapon for the Crusade, and Saint
Maximilian utilized it expertly. Shortly after he came to Rome he began
to suffer terrible headaches constantly. He also contracted
tuberculosis. The doctors failed to diagnose the consuming disease and
consequently his lungs continued to deteriorate, especially after his
return to Poland in 1919, where the climate was menacing to such a
condition. But the spiritual warrior never complained, and rarely
allowed any sign of his intense suffering to betray him. “It is
understood that whoever works for the Immaculate Virgin must be ready to
suffer much,” he would say. Few if any knew he was chronically ill.
Some even ignorantly belittled him for his deliberate slowness of
movement, which was necessary to avoid hemorrhaging.
The health of our saint worsened so drastically that late in 1919 he
had to enter a sanatorium, where he remained for two years. This was a
heavy cross for the relentless apostle, because his superiors ordered
him to suspend all his activities in the Militia during that period.
Since Maximilian himself was the heart and soul of the Crusade, he knew
this could well mean its finish. Yet he complied in absolute obedience.
Obedience, in fact, was his most heroic virtue, He wrote: “How does
God reveal His will? Through His representatives on earth….There is only
one exception, and that is when a superior commends one to do what
clearly, without a doubt, would be sinful, even in the
smallest degree….For then the superior would not be a representative of
God; and we are not subjects of any man.”
And so Father Kolbe had to trust Our Lady to govern the Militia in
his absence. But even if not the leading Knight of the Immaculata for
the present, he still remained a priest, and therefore continued to
perform the duties of that office as best he was able. He converted a
number of patients at the sanatorium, and brought many others back to
the sacraments-always using his little “bullets,” Miraculous Medals.
In May of 1920, the bedridden priest wrote to the members of the
Militia Immaculatae at Rome, suggesting, “It would be worthwhile to have
some type of publication to serve as an official organ of the M.I. By
means of it we could counteract the antireligious tendencies which
plague certain countries.” Actually Father Kolbe was aware that
antireligious activities plagued all the major nations, as he made clear
a year earlier in a stinging lecture concerning the conspiratorial
control of the world’s news media, pointing to its vile assaults against
the Faith and society.
In his absence Maximilian’s suggestion to publish an official organ
went without being acted upon. And in the meantime he saw its need with
more and more urgency. When his health had improved sufficiently for him
to resume work, he sought permission to undertake this publishing
venture himself.
His superiors agreed to it, provided he find his own means of
financing the work. And so the gentle Franciscan became a beggar,
timidly knocking at doors to ask for alms.
In January of 1922 the Militia’s first monthly periodical, the Knight
of the Immaculate Mother, made its appearance. Tremendously rising
printing expenses, however, soon led Maximilian Maria Kolbe in search of
his own printing press. And with help from an American priest he was
able to buy a small, antiquated, and barely-operable machine, thus
setting his crusade on a new course that would lead his work to world
fame.
The First Marytown
Nothing succeeds like success, as the saying goes. Within five years,
Father Kolbe built up the circulation of the Knight to 70,000
subscribers, amazing all his skeptical associates who predicted the
publishing operation would fail completely. Consequently, interest in
his Crusade increased so greatly that total membership in the Militia
rose to 126,000 by 1927.
The modest friary at Grodno, where Maximilian carried on his
apostolate during these five years, was no longer adequate. Franciscan
postulants, eager to dedicate their lives to so worthy an undertaking,
and to do so under the direction of so holy a superior, were coming to
Grodno in growing numbers. Nor would the friary accommodate the needed
expansion of machinery. But unfortunately Father Kolbe’s superiors would
not permit him to buy more land.
There is no stopping a crusader, however, when the Queen of Heaven is
on his side. Mary provided the solution by sending an angel, one by the
name of Prince Drucki-Lubecki, who presented as a gift to the Militia a
sizable piece of his estate near Warsaw. With lumber and other building
materials that also had been donated, the religious brothers soon
erected simple barracks on the site, and on the Feast of Our Lady’s
Presentation, November 21, 1927, the printing plant was moved from
Grodno. Two weeks later, on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, the
new home for the Militia was blessed and given the mane Niepokalanow –
“Marytown.”
Niepokalanow was to become truly a Marian citadel. “For us it is not
merely enough to defend the Faith,” wrote the Saint in 1929. “We have
the fortress and, full of trust in our Leader, we go among the enemy
hunting hearts to conquer for the Immaculata….Every heart that beats or
will beat on earth until the end of time must become the Immaculata’s
prize. This is our aim. And this as soon as possible.”
Through the genius of Father Kolbe, Niepokalanow grew into a miracle
of human achievement, a modern marvel never before seen in the world. It
evolved to become a city unto itself almost fully self-sufficient for
its own needs. Over 50 religious comprised its vibrant community, making
it the largest friary in the would. And these were fed, clothed,
housed, and even medically treated by means of the city’s own
facilities.
The principal industry of Niepokalanow, of course, was publishing. At
the height of its development ten separate periodicals were being
produced here with a combined readership of one and a half million
subscribers. The most modern technology and equipment was used,
including devices that were invented by the friars themselves. (One of
their patents won first prize at two different trade fairs.)
The city even had facilities for manufacturing machinery and
replacement parts. Moreover, Father Kolbe had plans to build his own
paper mill and an airfield to expedite production and delivery. In fact,
two of his friars were already taking aeronautical training at Warsaw
when the war broke out. And as if this were not enough-for Saint
Maximilian believed “enough” is a word that does not belong in an
apostle’s vocabulary – on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in
1938, he opened Radio Station SP3RN, whose call letters stood for
“Polish Station 3 Radio Niepokalanow.” Beyond that he had further plans
for film-making. “All the fruits of human genius must be mobilized for
the service and glory of God and His Immaculata,” he would say.
But back in the year 1930 these magnificent achievements were still a
dream to Maximilian, and were sheer madness in the opinion of skeptics.
Nevertheless, he believed in them. More importantly, he believed in
them. More importantly, he believed these same dreams could be fulfilled
everywhere in the world, not just in Poland or Europe. And so in March
of that year he and four Conventual Franciscan brothers set out to
conquer the pagan Far East. He arrived in Japan on April 24, knowing not
one soul there nor a single word of the language. Yet one month later
the man of miracles published his first Japanese edition of the Knight,
with the help of a Methodist translator (whom he quickly converted) and
an old printing press that was in such poor repair that his hands would
bleed from operating it.
The housing accommodations gave Father Kolbe and his friars no more
comfort. They lived in a dilapidated shack with such gaping holes in its
roof that a snowfall would blanket everything inside. And as for food –
according to Maximilian, the Japanese food was his heaviest penance.
But in so saying, of course, the gentle sufferer was only drawing
attention away from his physical agony. Violent headaches were
afflicting him constantly. His body became covered with abscesses so
painful that he could barely stand or walk. Also his lungs were terribly
lacerated from the tuberculosis. One Japanese doctor who examined him
and discovered that four-fifths of his lungs were destroyed, said that
it was clearly a miracle that the priest could have lived so long with
the disease never worsening or improving. Indeed we can say it was an
even greater miracle, considering the tremendous amount of work he did
in that long period of years.
In 1931 he opened at Nagasaki another city called in Japanese
Mugenzai no Sono – “Garden of the Immaculata.” And the following year he
went to India to establish still another mission base. Then in 1936,
his health now very critical from so much exhausting labor, he returned
to Poland and his splendid Niepokalanow.
The Red Crown is Bestowed
Early in 1938 the saint was already certain that war was imminent,
and began to prepare his spiritual children for any possible fate, even
martyrdom. “Would it not be the supreme honor if we could seal our Faith
with our blood?…What a dream!”
When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Saint Maximilian was ordered
to cease his publishing. Niepokalanow then turned its attention to
treating the war injured. Before long the Gestapo arrested Father Kolbe
and imprisoned him at Amtitz. He was released, but only to be arrested
again on February 17, 1941. This time he was sent to the dreaded
Auschwitz, and there under an inhuman monster of a commandant named
Fritch, he became known as Prisoner Number 16670, just one more of the
thousands of human statistics living in the terror of that vast horror
chamber.
Maximilian Kolbe would have been hated enough by his Nazi keepers
just for being a Pole. But he was a Catholic priest as well, and his
tormentors reserved their finest cruelty for that class of prisoner. In
spite of his obviously wretched health, he was assigned the hardest and
dirtiest tasks in the camp. Dogs were set upon him supposedly to make
him work faster, but actually more to torture the poor man. And should
he stumble or fall in his cruel work, as he did many times, he would be
beaten and kicked till he lost consciousness.
And still, saint that he was, Father Kolbe not only endured this
barbarity with heroic patience and courage, but he was the most loving
and tender consoler to fellow inmates who suffered not nearly as much.
The fact is that he was happy to receive the brutal beatings that put
him in the infirmary, for there he could hear confessions in the dark of
the night without being noticed.
The roll call one July morning at Block Fourteen, where Saint
Maximilian was being kept, revealed that a prisoner had escaped.
Commandant Fritch’s policy in such cases was to assemble all the
prisoners from the block in the yard where they would stand at attention
the whole day. If, by the end of the day, the escapee had not been
recovered, ten others would be chosen at random to die in his place –
death by starvation.
By three o’clock the prisoner was still not found and Fritch selected
his victims. One of them, Francis Gajowniczek, cried out, “My poor
wife, my poor children! What will happen to my family!” At that moment
another prisoner stepped up to the commandant with hat in hand. Fritch
bellowed, “What does this Polish pig want?”
The reply came: “I am a Catholic priest from Poland. I would like to take his place, because he has a wife and children.”
A Witness recalls, “From astonishment, the commandant appeared unable
to speak. After a moment he gave a sign with the hand. He spoke but one
word: ‘Away!’ Gajowniczek received the command to return to the row he
had just left. In this manner Father Maximilian took the place of the
condemned man.”
From the hour that Father Kolbe descended into the starvation bunker –
dark, cold underground cells of torture where human beings were left
naked without any food or water to shrivel up and die in unspeakable
agony – from that hour a great change came over the horrible place. Its
keepers testify that the wailing and cries of suffering that earlier
reverberated off the bunker’s walls were now converted into prayers and
hymns. The change, in fact, was seen throughout the whole camp. Beatings
were less frequent and less severe after the holy man’s sacrifice. Even
Fritch himself took no more hostage – victims to die in the place of
escapees.
“Never before,” said the guards, “have we seen anything like this.”
When they made their morning rounds at the bunker to remove starvation –
consumed corpses, they would find among the heaps of agonized,
half-dead victims one who was always in prayer on his knees or standing,
one who was always bright and fully conscious, one who was always
peaceful and well kept. That one was Father Kolbe. “As if in ecstasy,
his face was radiant. His body was spotless, and one could say that it
radiated light,” an attendant reports. “I will never forget the
impression this made on me.”
After two weeks, the saintly priest was still alive and in this same
beautiful state. The Germans needed the cell, however, and could wait no
longer for him to die. On the morning of August 14, 1941, the director
of the infirmary came with a syringe loaded with a lethal dose of
carbolic acid. Upon entering the saint’s cell, Maximilian cheerfully
offered the executioner his arm for the injection, and with it the frail
remnant of his life for God. The next day, on the Feast of Our Lady’s
Assumption, the body of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe was cremated, thus
ironically fulfilling his dearest dream of immolating himself
completely: “I would like to use myself completely up in the service of
the Immaculata, and to disappear without leaving a trace, as the winds
carry my ashes to the far corners of the world….”
