Homily for August 14th, 2020: St. Maximilian
Kolbe.
The Church
commemorates today a modern martyr, St. Maximilian Kolbe. Born in Poland in
1894 to devout Catholic parents, he was a mischievous boy. After his mother
scolded him one day for some misdeed, he changed. He explained later that in that
night the Virgin Mary had appeared to him 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."
At age 16 he entered
the Franciscan order, received the religious name Maximilian, and was ordained
priest at age 24. During years of ministry in Poland he founded a Marian sodality,
as well as a radio station and printing press to spread the gospel. From 1930
to 1936 he served as a missionary in Japan
When the Nazis
invaded Poland Auschwitz .
There he shared his meager rations with others, prayed with them, and heard
many confessions. In the summer of 1941 three prisoners managed to escape. In
retaliation the camp commander ordered 10 prisoners, selected at random, to be
starved to death in an underground bunker. When one of the men selected cried
out, “My wife, my children!” Fr. Maximilian immediately asked to take the man’s
place.
In the hunger
bunker Fr. Maximilian prayed with his fellow prisoners, celebrating Mass with
tiny amounts of bread and wine given to him by friendly guards, until only he
was still alive. After 2 weeks the Nazis then killed him with a deadly
injection.
The man whose life he had saved was
present at his canonization as a “martyr of charity” by Pope St. John Paul II
in October 1982. As we commemorate him today, we praise God that the age of
martyrs is not dead.
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