Who was St. Maximilian Kolbe?
by Ada Locatelli, fkmi
Raymond Kolbe was born on January 8, 1894, in ZdunskaWola, Poland.
Lively and clever, while still a child, he felt drawn to follow
the Lord and to love the Immaculata who had prodigiously offered
him
two crowns: one white, symbolizing purity, and the other red,
symbolizing martyrdom.
As a young man, he joined the Conventual Franciscan Friars and
received the religious name Maximilian. Shortly after, he was
sent to Rome to complete his studies in philosophy and theology.
Polish by birth but universal in spirit, taking inspiration from
the most authentic Marian tradition of his Conventual Franciscan
Order, on Oct. 16, 1917, he established the Militia of the Immaculata,
a public association of the faithful which is international and
universal.
Its spirituality consists in living a total consecration to the
Immaculata in order to attain, after her example, a more perfect
union with Christ and in order to collaborate with Her for the
spreading of Christ's Kingdom in the world. Ordained a priest
in the Conventual Franciscans in 1918, Fr. Maximilian returned
to Poland and began his untiring missionary activity. He not
only started publishing a monthly magazine,
The Knight of the Immaculata, but, in 1927, he also established
Niepokalanów (the City of the Immaculata), where over
700 friars totally consecrated to Mary devoted themselves to
various evangelization activities, especially to the printed
word apostolate.
In 1930, moved by the desire to lead the whole world to Christ
through Mary, he went to Japan
to establish a second City of the Immaculata, Mugenzai no Sono,
close to Nagasaki. Suffering from tuberculosis, he returned in
1936 to Poland and devoted himself to the spiritual and apostolic
development of Niepokalanów.
It had become the most prominent Catholic publishing house in
Poland. In 1939, when World War II broke out, Niepokalanów,
damaged by bombs, was used as a hospital and refuge for thousands
of refugees, especially Jews. Maximilian continued his press
apostolate until February 17, 1941, when he was arrested and
imprisoned in the Pawiak prison, near Warsaw. On May 28, 1941
he was permanently transferred to the Auschwitz concentration
camp, where he was destined to hard labor.
With his customary simplicity and determination, Maximilian,
prisoner 16670, continued to be an instrument in the hands of
the Immaculata in the midst of his fellow prisoners. Giving heroic
witness to the Gospel of charity, he freely offered his own life
for an unknown prisoner who had been condemned to death in the
starvation bunker.
After nearly two weeks of intense sufferings, he was killed by
an injection of carbolic acid on August 14, 1941, the eve of
the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady into Heaven. On August
15, his body was cremated and his ashes were scattered to the
wind. His holiness and his spiritual and apostolic legacy have
since spread throughout the world.
On October 10, 1982, John Paul II proclaimed him a saint, as
a martyr of charity. Maximilian Kolbe seems to be primarily a
man of action, both from the spiritual point of view (an ascetic
person) and the practical (an organizer, a director of a publishing
house, a superior of an amazingly large friary, and an outstanding
missionary). And yet this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Should we stop with this, we would have only a partial, warped
image of his human and Christian personality and of his spirituality.
Looking more closely at his life, we will instead discover a
constant theme that offers us an important "key" in
understanding how Raymond Kolbe became St. Maximilian Kolbe,
canonized as a martyr of charity. This constancy is beautifully
expressed in his simple words: "Let yourself be guided."
Saint Maximilian, persistently inviting both himself and his
followers to let themselves be guided, reveals his awareness
that one's salvation and sanctification are above all a free
initiative of God and the work of the Holy Spirit. Man has only
to respond, to obey, to collaborate: allowing himself to be guided.
All this can be accomplished by following the example of the
Blessed Virgin Mary who, at the Annunciation, answered: "Behold,
I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according
to
your word" (Lk 1:38).
For Maximilian, self-abandonment and action are the two faces
of the same medal and of the same journey in love, answering
God's love, by which he always felt embraced. He lived this experience
of abandonment with realism in his daily life: as a Franciscan,
a priest and a missionary; in the years of his formation as well
as in those of his most incredible apostolic activities and of
his heaviest responsibilities; in the exuberance of his youth
as well as in the time of his physical and moral sufferings.
This living and loving experience of abandonment was the secret
of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe's availability to total surrender. In
other words, his capacity to let himself be guided characterized
the journey of his whole life, during which he was gradually
transformed to a living image of Christ, by the work of the Holy
Spirit and the Immaculata.
(c) Copyright 1998-2004 The Militia
of the Immaculata. All rights reserved.
| Contact
Us |
MI
HOME
| Back
to top |