for August 14
Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, Priest and Martyr

There are special readings for today’s memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest who died at Auschwitz and was canonized by Pope John Paul II. The theme of the readings is love of God as expressed in the love of neighbor, and that is what Maximilian Kolbe lived and died for.

Kolbe was a Conventual Franciscan. He was born in 1894 and raised in Poland (in the area then under Russian rule), although his father was ethnically German. He earned doctorates in philosophy and theology and served as a missionary in Japan and India before returning to Poland and founding the Monastery of Niepokalanow (Immaculate Conception). He had a great devotion to the Virgin Mary. When the Germans invaded and occupied Poland in 1939, precipitating World War II, he was arrested and encouraged to sign the Deutsche Volksliste (German People’s List) that would have given him preferential status based on his father’s background, but he refused. He was at that time released and returned to the monastery where a small remnant of friars ministered to the occupied population and sheltered refugees, including 2000 Jews whom they hid.  He also continued the friary’s work of publishing religious works and used that as a cover for printing anti-Nazi tracts.

In February 1941, the Gestapo shut down the monastery and arrested Kolbe. In May he was sent to Auschwitz, where he ministered to his fellow inmates however he could. At the end of July, a prisoner managed to escape. Following the usual Nazi protocol of exacting punishment on the group, the deputy commander of the camp mustered the rest of the prisoners and chose ten at random to be starved to death. One of those picked, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out his concern for his wife and children, and Kolbe offered to take his place since he did not have a family. The ten were placed in a bunker without food or drink. According to a janitor, Fr. Kolbe led them in prayer and kept them calm. After two weeks, all but Kolbe had died and on August 14 he was given a lethal injection. He was cremated the next day on the Feast of the Assumption.

Maximilian Kolbe was beatified as a Confessor of the Faith by Pope Paul VI. However, when John Paul canonized him in 1982, he declared him a martyr. This has caused some controversy as martyrs are people who died because of hatred toward the faith. But John Paul, who himself lived through the German occupation of Poland, felt that the Nazi ideology of hatred toward entire categories of people and the systematic destruction and oppression based on it amount to a hatred of the Christian faith. The readings from the first letter of John and John’s Gospel are good testimony for that argument. This is my commandment: love one another as I have loved you. For John, the very essence of following Jesus is to embody the same sacrificial love toward one another that Jesus poured out for us, first in taking on our human life and then in giving it up.  The way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

For myself, to consider anyone subhuman is an assault on the Christian understanding of humanity made in the image and likeness of God. The Church father Irenaeus said, “Man fully alive is the glory o—f God.” Sin may constrain our lives and tarnish the glory beneath, but the darkness cannot quench the light within us.  hat is what the Nazis strove to do. In addition to killing millions and quashing the sovereignty of many nations under their boots, they tried to strip people of any humanity that surfaced. My uncle was imprisoned in Dachau, as were many professors, priests, and other professionals. One warm, sunny day in April he said to a guard, “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” In response, the guard struck his face with his rifle, permanently flattening his nose. How dare he, a prisoner of no account, enjoy the beauty of the day! When the camp was finally liberated, my uncle was immensely touched by the care and compassion with which the American soldiers assisted them despite their emaciated state. “They treated us like human beings,” he said, “even though we didn’t look human.” Let us love not in word or speech but in deed and truth. —Christine Szczepanowski

The readings can be found on the US Conference of Catholic Bishops website.