Did You Know {2}

Nothing in his background prepared Father Maximilian Kolbe to be a hero of the Christian faith, but God uses the foolish things of the world to confound the wise – 1 COR. 1:27. Father Kolbe began his earthly pilgrimage on January 8, 1894, at Zdunska Wola, a city of Lodz, Poland. His ethnic German father Julius Kolbe and Polish mother Maria Dabrowska baptized him with the name Rajmund.

The second of five sons, their poor home was a deeply religious family. Lean finances, however made Julius Kolbe to send only his first son Francis to school, leaving Rajmund to be homeschooled by a kind priest. A pharmacist attracted by his brilliance chipped in with private lessons. Succour came the way of the family again when Rajmund and his elder brother Francis enrolled at the Franciscan Junior Seminary in Lwow.

Later, Joseph was to follow his elder brothers into the priestly order. Rajmund had a passion for mathematics and was considered a kind of genius in the subject. A very capable student, he fantasized about rockets and space flights and filled his student papers with strange space ships designed to reach the moon. Deeply at home in the seminary, Rajmund began his novitiate year in 1910 and took his first vows in 1911. In line with the Franciscan tradition, he renounced his worldly name and took on the name Maximilian. Tragedy befell the family when his father was hung by the Russian forces in 1907 for opposing their occupation of his beloved Poland.

Kolbe’s mother, Maria Dabrowska was a most remarkable Christian who followed all her sons in religious life by becoming a Tertiary Franciscan and worked as a midwife, often giving her services free. She also operated a grocery and general goods store. And as he grew older, Maximilian became more absorbed with spiritual things than mathematics. Even before his priestly ordination, the Catholic Church sent him to Rome where he specialized in Philosophy at the Gregorian University and in Theology at the Seraphicum. On April 28, 1918, Maximilian Kolbe was ordained a priest of the Catholic Church. On a visit to Rome in 1917 before his ordination, Kolbe saw a manifestation of Freemasons. By Saint Peter’s Square under the Pope’s window, some Masonic persons waved a black flag with the inscription: “Satan will rule the Vatican and the Pope will serve him like a Swiss guard.” The abominable flag had an effigy of Saint Michael the Archangel under Lucifer’s feet! Maximilian Kolbe was horrified that Freemasonry could be so bold while the church remained in slumber. After sleeping over the offence and discussing it with fellow friars, Kolbe founded the Militia Immaculata as an army of spiritual knights in the fashion of Saint Francis, to do battle with Freemasonry and other enemies of the Catholic Church. Today, Mlilitia Immaculata is on ground in more than twenty countries in three continents.

During WW 11, Nazi German forces invaded and occupied his beloved Poland. Father Kolbe hated the Nazis for their racism, genocide and heartlessness. He gave shelter to refugees from Greater Poland including 2,000 Jews whom he hid from the vicious Nazis in his friary in Niepokalanow. On February 17, 1941, Father Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo, the Nazi police and imprisoned in the Pawiak facility. He was transferred to the infamous Auschwitz prison as prisoner #16670 on May 28, 1941. First assigned to transfer dead bodies to the crematorium, he was sent to field brigade of Block 14 at the end of July. That month end, three prisoners escaped from the camp and SS-Hauptsurmfuhrer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander picked ten men to be starved to death in an underground bunker in order to prevent further escape attempts. In fright, one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, wailed uncontrollably, “My wife! My children!”

Promptly, Kolbe volunteered and took his place in the starvation bunker. The merciless German murderers then had the ten men locked up in the starvation cell without food and water. As usual, Father Kolbe calmed their desperation into faith-filled acceptance of God’s will. The men prayed and sang during the nights until complete silence fell on the death chamber on the second week. On August 14, 1941, some guards opened the starvation cell and met four prisoners still alive, exhausted but peaceful, among them Father Kolbe. The guards then administered a shot of carbolic acid on the prisoners to end their misery and the next day, the body of Father Maximilian Kolbe was sent to the ovens of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, Poland.

Rev. Father Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan friar of absolute integrity, outstanding pastoral care, and astonishing cerebral height who manifested God’s agape love for humanity is an unknown, but most luminous example of the spirit of Jesus Christ and a great hero of the Christian faith.