HOME | DD

Description
St. Maximilian Kolbe icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 3rd 2015
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

"Greater love has no man than this:
to lay down his life for his friends."
~ John 15:13

“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
~ St. Maximilian Kolbe

Here is the great St. Maximilian Kolbe, “the Saint of Auschwitz” and the “Martyr of Charity.” I have here represented him in his Franciscan habit, with the prisoner uniform that he had in Auschwitz draped over one shoulder. The triangular red “P” designates him as a political prisoner, and below that is his number 16670. In one hand he holds a rosary, while the other clutches some copies of his Marian publication Rycerz Niepokalanej. The palm branch signifies his victorious martyrdom.

EDIT: I changed the color of his habit from brown to a dark grey, as I was corrected that the Conventual OFM Friars wore dark grey habits instead of brow habits. I also filled the halo in with gold.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe (January 8th 1894 – August 14th 1941 A.D.) or Maximilian Maria was born Rajmond Kolbe in Zduńska Wola, Poland, to his parents Julius and Maria Kolbe. His family soon afterwards moved to Pabianice, another city in Poland, with the young baby boy and his other brothers. As a child, Rajmond was naughty and mischievous and caused his parents a great deal of trouble. One day, after he had done something particularly bad, his mother cried out in exasperation, “Rajmond Kolbe, what will ever become of you?!” He took this very much to heart, and later went before an image of Our Lady and asked her, “Oh Mother, what is to become of me?” He was twelve at the time, and it was then he received a vision of the Blessed Virgin that he never forgot. She approached him holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked him if he was willing to accept either of the crowns. The white one meant that he would always preserve his virginity and purity, the other meant that he would be a martyr. He replied that he wanted both of them. Then Mary smiled and withdrew.

A year later, in 1907, he and his older brother Francis entered the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwów. There, Rajmond pursued his studies eagerly and excelled especially in mathematics and physics. However, he also was passionately patriotic and interested in military strategy and other martial pursuits. His teachers thought a brilliant career as either a strategist or a scientist would suit him well. At the time, Poland was occupied by Russia, and Rajmond’s love for his native country and his desire to help save Poland from foreign oppression as a soldier almost made him abandon his plans for the priesthood. He stayed in the seminary, however, and at the age of 16, he became a Conventual Franciscan novice on September 4th 1910 and took the name Maximilian. He took his first vows a year later. In 1912, he was sent to Rome to study philosophy at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University, and earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1915. On November 1st 1914, he made his final vows and adopted the named “Maria.” That same year, his father, who had been fighting in the Polish army, was captured by the Russians and executed. After his death, his mother became a Benedictine nun.

From 1915 to 1919, Maximilian studied theology at the Pontficial University of St. Bonaventure (also known as the Franciscan Collegio Serafico) in Rome. Even though he had abandoned plans for a military career, Maximilian still very much had a militant spirituality and wanted to be a soldier of God and His Mother. On October 16th 1917, he and a group of six of his seminarian friends founded the Militia Immaculata (the Knights of the Immaculata). Their group was dedicated to spreading devotion to Our Lady by consecrating themselves entirely to her service and the service of God, for the conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church, and for the spread of the Miraculous Medal. Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and nearly died. He recovered, however, but the illness had taken its toll on his body and left him frail and weak for the rest of his life. He was at last ordained to the priesthood on April 28th 1918 at the age of 24.

In July 1919, he returned to his beloved (now independent) Poland and taught history at the seminary in Kraków until 1922. While there, he suffered from reoccurring bouts of tuberculosis which forced him to quit teaching. His illness had so broken his health that one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was badly damaged. He, however, remained undaunted. In January of 1922, he began a monthly devotional publication named Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate). He earned his doctorate of theology on July 22nd 1922, and for the next four years, operated a printing press in Grodno. However, the operation quickly outgrew the little Grodno Friary and he began looking for another site. In 1927, Prince Jan Drucko-Lubecki of Poland gave him land at Teresin (near Warsaw) to build a monastery. There, Maximilian founded a Conventual Franciscan monastery and called it Niepokalanów (City of the Immaculata). He opened a minor seminary in 1929. The monastery was dedicated to charitable works and evangelization through the use of radio and the magazine Rycerz Niepokalanej. It grew quickly and soon became the largest monastery in the world, housing 750 friars and distributing 750,000 magazines a month. By 1935, they began a daily newspaper called Mały Dziennik (The Little Daily) with 137,000 copies made on week days and 225,000 on Sundays.

Kolbe, however, wanted to go beyond Poland. He received permission from his superiors to go on a mission to China. With the blessing of his Father General, Maximilian prepared his expedition. Asked whether he had money to finance it, he replied: "Money? It will turn up somehow or other. Mary will see to it. It's her business and her Son's." In 1930, Maximilian left for the Far East with four of his friars. He went first to China and landed in Shanghai, but his mission there was unsuccessful. He then went to Japan, and within a month of his arrival (despite not knowing any Japanese) he had begun a Japanese version of the Rycerz Niepokalanej called Seibo no Kishi. In 1931, he acquired some land near Nagasaki on the side of Mt. Kikosan that had been rejected by the Japanese because it was deemed to be unsuitable. He built a monastery there and named it Mugenzai no Sono (Garden of the Immaculate). When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the monastery was unharmed because the mountain had shielded it from the blast. He left for India in 1932 and tried to found another monastery, but it was unsuccessful because the superior couldn’t spare any priests and it had to close. He was forced to return to Poland in 1936 because of his poor health. His energy and determination, however, was unabated, and by December of 1938 he had started a radio station at Niepokalanów.

On September 1st 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. World War II had begun. By the 13th, Niepokalanów was invaded and the inhabitants deported to Germany. Maximilian was arrested on the 19th but was later released on the 8th of December. Once he was released, he went back to his beloved Niepokalanów and continued his work there. He and the other monks sheltered and fed the hundreds of refugees who came to them, and hid more than a thousand Jews from the Nazis in their own friary. His printing press continued to issue religious tracts, including anti-Nazi publications. In 1941, he published his last edition of Rycerz Niepokalanej. On February 14th 1941, he was arrested and sent to the Pawiak camp in Warsaw. The SS guards there singled him out for particularly brutal treatment. On May 28th, he was deported to Auschwitz. There, despite his ill health, he was put to work doing the hardest tasks, and the officer put in charge over him conceived a particularly vehement hatred for the Franciscan. After being brutally kicked and lashed, he was thrown face-down in the mud and left for dead, but some of his companions secretly brought him to the camp hospital. During the entire time he was in Auschwitz, he spoke to the others of the love of God, heard confessions, said Mass (using smuggled bread and wine), encouraged the others and generously gave up his place in the food line so others could eat, or, when he did get some food, shared it with everyone else. One prisoner, named Fr. Zygmunt Rusczak later said of him: "Each time I saw Fr. Kolbe in the courtyard I felt within myself an extraordinary effusion of his goodness. Although he wore the same ragged clothes as the rest of us, with the same tin can hanging from his belt, one forgot his wretched exterior and was conscious only of the charm of his inspired countenance and of his radiant holiness."

On July 29th 1941, the camp sirens announced that three prisoners had escaped. The prisoners of Auschwitz were all lined up. SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch picked out 10 men to be sent to the starvation bunker as a reprisal for the escapees. One of the condemned, a Polish officer named Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out: "Oh, my poor wife, my poor children! I shall never see them again!" Fr. Kolbe stood out of line and humbly asked to replace the unfortunate Gajowniczek in the starvation bunker, saying that he had no wife and children, and that he was old and useless anyway. Fritzsch, shocked and surprised at the request, granted it, and Fr. Kolbe joined the other 9 doomed men. They were marched to the starvation bunker and locked in. Bruno Borgowiec, a janitor’s assistant and interpreter who worked in the underground bunker related that all while they were locked in, they daily sang hymns, prayed loudly and said the rosary. They sang so loudly that the prisoners in the other cells heard them and joined in. Fr. Kolbe led them all in prayer, so much so that it sounded like the starvation bunker had become a church. When the SS officers weren’t around, Borgowiec comforted and talked to them. When the SS officers came to check in on them, the prisoners wailed for bread but were refused, and when some came towards the door they were shot and killed. The entire time, Fr. Kolbe never complained and only worked to revive and raise the spirits of the others. When many days had passed and they had all grown weak, they could only whisper their prayers together. Two weeks passed and Fr. Kolbe was still alive, while all the others were prostrate and dead on the floor. What was more he was kneeling in the middle, with a cheerful expression on his face. The SS officers were getting impatient, so they decided to execute him by injecting him with carbolic acid in a vein of his left arm. Borgowiec related that he couldn’t watch this being done, but once the officers had left, he came back to the cell and found the dead Fr. Kolbe in a sitting position against the wall, with his eyes still open, and a calm and radiant expression on his face. He had died on August 14th 1941. His body was cremated on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.

St. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified on January 30th 1969 by Pope Paul VI and canonized on October 10th 1982 by Pope Saint John Paul II, who called him “a martyr of charity.”

“The burning zeal for God’s glory that motivates you fills my heart with joy. It is sad for us to see in our own time that indifferentism in its many forms is spreading like an epidemic not only among the laity but also among religious. But God is worthy of glory beyond measure, and therefore it is of absolute and supreme importance to seek that glory with all the power of our feeble resources. Since we are mere creatures we can never return to him all that is his due. The most resplendent manifestation of God’s glory is the salvation of souls, whom Christ redeemed by shedding his blood. To work for the salvation and sanctification of as many souls as possible, therefore, is the preeminent purpose of the apostolic life. Let me, then, say a few words that may show the way toward achieving God’s glory and the sanctification of many souls.

God, who is all-knowing and all-wise, knows best what we should do to increase his glory. Through his representatives on earth he continually reveals his will to us; thus it is obedience and obedience alone that is the sure sign to us of the divine will. A superior may, it is true, make a mistake; but it is impossible for us to be mistaken in obeying a superior’s command. The only exception to this rule is the case of a superior commanding something that in even the slightest way would contravene God’s law. Such a superior would not be conveying God’s will.

God alone is infinitely wise, holy, merciful, our Lord, Creator, and Father; he is beginning and end, wisdom and power and love; he is all. Everything other than God has value to the degree that it is referred to him, the maker of all and our own redeemer, the final end of all things. It is he who, declaring his adorable will to us through his representatives on earth, draws us to himself and whose plan is to draw others to himself through us and to join us all to himself in an ever deepening love.

Look, then, at the high dignity that by God’s mercy belongs to our state in life. Obedience raises us beyond the limits of our littleness and puts us in harmony with God’s will. In boundless wisdom and care, his will guides us to act rightly. Holding fast to that will, which no creature can thwart, we are filled with unsurpassable strength.

Obedience is the one and the only way of wisdom and prudence for us to offer glory to God. If there were another, Christ would certainly have shown it to us by word and example. Scripture, however, summed up his entire life at Nazareth in the words: He was subject to them; Scripture set obedience as the theme of the rest of his life, repeatedly declaring that he came into the world to do his Father’s will. Let us love our loving Father with all our hearts. Let our obedience increase that love, above all when it requires us to surrender our own will. Jesus Christ crucified is our sublime guide toward growth in God’s love.

We will learn this lesson more quickly through the Immaculate Virgin, whom God has made the dispenser of his mercy. It is beyond all doubt that Mary’s will represents to us the will of God himself. By dedicating ourselves to her we become in her hands instruments of God’s mercy even as she was such an instrument in God’s hands. We should let ourselves be guided and led by Mary and rest quiet and secure in her hands. She will watch out for us, provide for us, answer our needs of body and spirit; she will dissolve all our difficulties and worries.”

~ from a letter by Saint Maximilian Kolbe

The Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe is celebrated on August 14th.

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of political prisoners, journalists, the radio, and drug addicts.

O God, who filled the Priest and Martyr Saint Maximilian Kolbe
with a burning love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary
and with zeal for souls and love of neighbor,
graciously grant, through his intercession,
that, striving for your glory by eagerly serving others,
we may be conformed, even until death, to your Son.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

Description
St. Maximilian Kolbe icon
© Cecilia Lawrence
September 3rd 2015
4.5 x 6 inches
Ink, watercolor, gold leaf

"Greater love has no man than this:
to lay down his life for his friends."
~ John 15:13

“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”
~ St. Maximilian Kolbe

Here is the great St. Maximilian Kolbe, “the Saint of Auschwitz” and the “Martyr of Charity.” I have here represented him in his Franciscan habit, with the prisoner uniform that he had in Auschwitz draped over one shoulder. The triangular red “P” designates him as a political prisoner, and below that is his number 16670. In one hand he holds a rosary, while the other clutches some copies of his Marian publication Rycerz Niepokalanej. The palm branch signifies his victorious martyrdom.

EDIT: I changed the color of his habit from brown to a dark grey, as I was corrected that the Conventual OFM Friars wore dark grey habits instead of brow habits. I also filled the halo in with gold.

:+: A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF THE SAINT :+:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe (January 8th 1894 – August 14th 1941 A.D.) or Maximilian Maria was born Rajmond Kolbe in Zduńska Wola, Poland, to his parents Julius and Maria Kolbe. His family soon afterwards moved to Pabianice, another city in Poland, with the young baby boy and his other brothers. As a child, Rajmond was naughty and mischievous and caused his parents a great deal of trouble. One day, after he had done something particularly bad, his mother cried out in exasperation, “Rajmond Kolbe, what will ever become of you?!” He took this very much to heart, and later went before an image of Our Lady and asked her, “Oh Mother, what is to become of me?” He was twelve at the time, and it was then he received a vision of the Blessed Virgin that he never forgot. She approached him holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked him if he was willing to accept either of the crowns. The white one meant that he would always preserve his virginity and purity, the other meant that he would be a martyr. He replied that he wanted both of them. Then Mary smiled and withdrew.

A year later, in 1907, he and his older brother Francis entered the Conventual Franciscan minor seminary in Lwów. There, Rajmond pursued his studies eagerly and excelled especially in mathematics and physics. However, he also was passionately patriotic and interested in military strategy and other martial pursuits. His teachers thought a brilliant career as either a strategist or a scientist would suit him well. At the time, Poland was occupied by Russia, and Rajmond’s love for his native country and his desire to help save Poland from foreign oppression as a soldier almost made him abandon his plans for the priesthood. He stayed in the seminary, however, and at the age of 16, he became a Conventual Franciscan novice on September 4th 1910 and took the name Maximilian. He took his first vows a year later. In 1912, he was sent to Rome to study philosophy at the Jesuit Pontifical Gregorian University, and earned his doctorate in philosophy in 1915. On November 1st 1914, he made his final vows and adopted the named “Maria.” That same year, his father, who had been fighting in the Polish army, was captured by the Russians and executed. After his death, his mother became a Benedictine nun.

From 1915 to 1919, Maximilian studied theology at the Pontficial University of St. Bonaventure (also known as the Franciscan Collegio Serafico) in Rome. Even though he had abandoned plans for a military career, Maximilian still very much had a militant spirituality and wanted to be a soldier of God and His Mother. On October 16th 1917, he and a group of six of his seminarian friends founded the Militia Immaculata (the Knights of the Immaculata). Their group was dedicated to spreading devotion to Our Lady by consecrating themselves entirely to her service and the service of God, for the conversion of sinners and the enemies of the Catholic Church, and for the spread of the Miraculous Medal. Soon afterwards he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and nearly died. He recovered, however, but the illness had taken its toll on his body and left him frail and weak for the rest of his life. He was at last ordained to the priesthood on April 28th 1918 at the age of 24.

In July 1919, he returned to his beloved (now independent) Poland and taught history at the seminary in Kraków until 1922. While there, he suffered from reoccurring bouts of tuberculosis which forced him to quit teaching. His illness had so broken his health that one of his lungs had collapsed and the other was badly damaged. He, however, remained undaunted. In January of 1922, he began a monthly devotional publication named Rycerz Niepokalanej (Knight of the Immaculate). He earned his doctorate of theology on July 22nd 1922, and for the next four years, operated a printing press in Grodno. However, the operation quickly outgrew the little Grodno Friary and he began looking for another site. In 1927, Prince Jan Drucko-Lubecki of Poland gave him land at Teresin (near Warsaw) to build a monastery. There, Maximilian founded a Conventual Franciscan monastery and called it Niepokalanów (City of the Immaculata). He opened a minor seminary in 1929. The monastery was dedicated to charitable works and evangelization through the use of radio and the magazine Rycerz Niepokalanej. It grew quickly and soon became the largest monastery in the world, housing 750 friars and distributing 750,000 magazines a month. By 1935, they began a daily newspaper called Mały Dziennik (The Little Daily) with 137,000 copies made on week days and 225,000 on Sundays.

Kolbe, however, wanted to go beyond Poland. He received permission from his superiors to go on a mission to China. With the blessing of his Father General, Maximilian prepared his expedition. Asked whether he had money to finance it, he replied: "Money? It will turn up somehow or other. Mary will see to it. It's her business and her Son's." In 1930, Maximilian left for the Far East with four of his friars. He went first to China and landed in Shanghai, but his mission there was unsuccessful. He then went to Japan, and within a month of his arrival (despite not knowing any Japanese) he had begun a Japanese version of the Rycerz Niepokalanej called Seibo no Kishi. In 1931, he acquired some land near Nagasaki on the side of Mt. Kikosan that had been rejected by the Japanese because it was deemed to be unsuitable. He built a monastery there and named it Mugenzai no Sono (Garden of the Immaculate). When the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki in 1945, the monastery was unharmed because the mountain had shielded it from the blast. He left for India in 1932 and tried to found another monastery, but it was unsuccessful because the superior couldn’t spare any priests and it had to close. He was forced to return to Poland in 1936 because of his poor health. His energy and determination, however, was unabated, and by December of 1938 he had started a radio station at Niepokalanów.

On September 1st 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. World War II had begun. By the 13th, Niepokalanów was invaded and the inhabitants deported to Germany. Maximilian was arrested on the 19th but was later released on the 8th of December. Once he was released, he went back to his beloved Niepokalanów and continued his work there. He and the other monks sheltered and fed the hundreds of refugees who came to them, and hid more than a thousand Jews from the Nazis in their own friary. His printing press continued to issue religious tracts, including anti-Nazi publications. In 1941, he published his last edition of Rycerz Niepokalanej. On February 14th 1941, he was arrested and sent to the Pawiak camp in Warsaw. The SS guards there singled him out for particularly brutal treatment. On May 28th, he was deported to Auschwitz. There, despite his ill health, he was put to work doing the hardest tasks, and the officer put in charge over him conceived a particularly vehement hatred for the Franciscan. After being brutally kicked and lashed, he was thrown face-down in the mud and left for dead, but some of his companions secretly brought him to the camp hospital. During the entire time he was in Auschwitz, he spoke to the others of the love of God, heard confessions, said Mass (using smuggled bread and wine), encouraged the others and generously gave up his place in the food line so others could eat, or, when he did get some food, shared it with everyone else. One prisoner, named Fr. Zygmunt Rusczak later said of him: "Each time I saw Fr. Kolbe in the courtyard I felt within myself an extraordinary effusion of his goodness. Although he wore the same ragged clothes as the rest of us, with the same tin can hanging from his belt, one forgot his wretched exterior and was conscious only of the charm of his inspired countenance and of his radiant holiness."

On July 29th 1941, the camp sirens announced that three prisoners had escaped. The prisoners of Auschwitz were all lined up. SS-Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch picked out 10 men to be sent to the starvation bunker as a reprisal for the escapees. One of the condemned, a Polish officer named Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out: "Oh, my poor wife, my poor children! I shall never see them again!" Fr. Kolbe stood out of line and humbly asked to replace the unfortunate Gajowniczek in the starvation bunker, saying that he had no wife and children, and that he was old and useless anyway. Fritzsch, shocked and surprised at the request, granted it, and Fr. Kolbe joined the other 9 doomed men. They were marched to the starvation bunker and locked in. Bruno Borgowiec, a janitor’s assistant and interpreter who worked in the underground bunker related that all while they were locked in, they daily sang hymns, prayed loudly and said the rosary. They sang so loudly that the prisoners in the other cells heard them and joined in. Fr. Kolbe led them all in prayer, so much so that it sounded like the starvation bunker had become a church. When the SS officers weren’t around, Borgowiec comforted and talked to them. When the SS officers came to check in on them, the prisoners wailed for bread but were refused, and when some came towards the door they were shot and killed. The entire time, Fr. Kolbe never complained and only worked to revive and raise the spirits of the others. When many days had passed and they had all grown weak, they could only whisper their prayers together. Two weeks passed and Fr. Kolbe was still alive, while all the others were prostrate and dead on the floor. What was more he was kneeling in the middle, with a cheerful expression on his face. The SS officers were getting impatient, so they decided to execute him by injecting him with carbolic acid in a vein of his left arm. Borgowiec related that he couldn’t watch this being done, but once the officers had left, he came back to the cell and found the dead Fr. Kolbe in a sitting position against the wall, with his eyes still open, and a calm and radiant expression on his face. He had died on August 14th 1941. His body was cremated on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady.

St. Maximilian Kolbe was beatified on January 30th 1969 by Pope Paul VI and canonized on October 10th 1982 by Pope Saint John Paul II, who called him “a martyr of charity.”

“The burning zeal for God’s glory that motivates you fills my heart with joy. It is sad for us to see in our own time that indifferentism in its many forms is spreading like an epidemic not only among the laity but also among religious. But God is worthy of glory beyond measure, and therefore it is of absolute and supreme importance to seek that glory with all the power of our feeble resources. Since we are mere creatures we can never return to him all that is his due. The most resplendent manifestation of God’s glory is the salvation of souls, whom Christ redeemed by shedding his blood. To work for the salvation and sanctification of as many souls as possible, therefore, is the preeminent purpose of the apostolic life. Let me, then, say a few words that may show the way toward achieving God’s glory and the sanctification of many souls.

God, who is all-knowing and all-wise, knows best what we should do to increase his glory. Through his representatives on earth he continually reveals his will to us; thus it is obedience and obedience alone that is the sure sign to us of the divine will. A superior may, it is true, make a mistake; but it is impossible for us to be mistaken in obeying a superior’s command. The only exception to this rule is the case of a superior commanding something that in even the slightest way would contravene God’s law. Such a superior would not be conveying God’s will.

God alone is infinitely wise, holy, merciful, our Lord, Creator, and Father; he is beginning and end, wisdom and power and love; he is all. Everything other than God has value to the degree that it is referred to him, the maker of all and our own redeemer, the final end of all things. It is he who, declaring his adorable will to us through his representatives on earth, draws us to himself and whose plan is to draw others to himself through us and to join us all to himself in an ever deepening love.

Look, then, at the high dignity that by God’s mercy belongs to our state in life. Obedience raises us beyond the limits of our littleness and puts us in harmony with God’s will. In boundless wisdom and care, his will guides us to act rightly. Holding fast to that will, which no creature can thwart, we are filled with unsurpassable strength.

Obedience is the one and the only way of wisdom and prudence for us to offer glory to God. If there were another, Christ would certainly have shown it to us by word and example. Scripture, however, summed up his entire life at Nazareth in the words: He was subject to them; Scripture set obedience as the theme of the rest of his life, repeatedly declaring that he came into the world to do his Father’s will. Let us love our loving Father with all our hearts. Let our obedience increase that love, above all when it requires us to surrender our own will. Jesus Christ crucified is our sublime guide toward growth in God’s love.

We will learn this lesson more quickly through the Immaculate Virgin, whom God has made the dispenser of his mercy. It is beyond all doubt that Mary’s will represents to us the will of God himself. By dedicating ourselves to her we become in her hands instruments of God’s mercy even as she was such an instrument in God’s hands. We should let ourselves be guided and led by Mary and rest quiet and secure in her hands. She will watch out for us, provide for us, answer our needs of body and spirit; she will dissolve all our difficulties and worries.”

~ from a letter by Saint Maximilian Kolbe

The Feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe is celebrated on August 14th.

St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of political prisoners, journalists, the radio, and drug addicts.

O God, who filled the Priest and Martyr Saint Maximilian Kolbe
with a burning love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary
and with zeal for souls and love of neighbor,
graciously grant, through his intercession,
that, striving for your glory by eagerly serving others,
we may be conformed, even until death, to your Son.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.