The Path of Greatest Love

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - August 17, 2007

A prophetic summary of the heroic life and death of St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe, whose feast day we celebrated on Tuesday, happened when he was a young boy growing up near Lodz, Poland.

After being scolded by his mother for continued misbehavior, the young Raymond Kolbe turned in prayer to the Mother of God and asked her what was to become of him. She appeared to him holding two crowns, one white and one red — symbolizing purity and martyrdom — and asked which one he would be willing to accept. With a precocious boldness that would define his whole life, he said he want to accept them both. And he did.

From his youth, his pure love for God radiated and that love inspired him to accomplish great works through daily oblations. He became a Franciscan at 16 and received the name Maximilian Mary. He obtained two doctorates in Rome, a testimony both of his brilliance as well as his hunger to learn more about God.

Prior to his priestly ordination in 1918 at the age of 24, he founded the Militia of the Immaculate, a pious association of the faithful dedicated to the Blessed Mother that would valiantly strive for the conversion and sanctification of non-Catholics, especially those most hostile to the Church. The first point of their rule of life which he composed established the pillar for what he deemed the most effective evangelization, "I must be a saint and a great saint."

Upon his return to Poland in 1922, he launched out on this evangelical work by founding a monthly magazine, a daily newspaper and a radio station. The Polish bishops one day would say that these apostolates were essential in helping the Polish nation to endure the horrors that would come from the Nazi and communist occupations. To assist with these enormous media missions, he formed a Franciscan friary called Niepokalanow, The City of the Immaculate, which would soon become the largest monastery in the world.

Once the Nazis occupied Poland in 1939, Fr. Maximilian opened up Niepokalanow to shelter Polish refugees, most of whom were Jews, and continued boldly to write and speak out against Nazi lies. Eventually he was arrested. After three months in a brutal Warsaw prison, where he was repeatedly beaten for his fidelity to Christ, he was deported to Auschwitz.

The concentration camp was ruled by hatred, but priests were treated with singular barbarism. Fr. Maximilian bore it all, confident that our Lady would intercede for him each day to help him maintain his pure love even for his persecutors and prepare for his red crown.

Despite daily exhaustion and multiple injuries, he would give his meager rations to others, secretly hear confessions, and speak of the love of God. When asked why he was doing this, he responded simply: "Every man has an aim in life. For most men, it is to return home to their wives and families, or to their mothers. For my part, I give my life for the good of all men."

That daily habit of giving himself for the good of others would soon reach its consummation.

On July 31, 1941, the SS announced that as a reprisal for a prison escape from Maximilian's block, ten men would be chosen at random to die in the starvation chamber. Shrieks of grief accompanied each prisoner number announced. After Franciszek Gajowniczek was selected, he wailed, "My poor wife! My poor children! I shall never see them again!"

At that moment, Fr. Maximilian moved forward. "Who is this Polish pig," Lagerfuhrer Karl Fritzsch scornfully queried, "and what does he want?"

To the question about his identity, Fr. Maximilian responded not with his birth name, his religious name or even his prison identification number. Instead, he went to the core of his being: "I am a Catholic priest," and, pointing to Gajowniczek, said what he desired: "And I want to die for that man."

Startled, Fritzsch acceded. Kolbe and nine others were led off to the starvation bunker.

For the next two weeks, Maximilian prepared his fellow prisoners to die in such a way as to enter into life. He led them in daily prayers, in the recitation of the Rosary, and in hymns to God and to the Blessed Virgin. After 14 days, this man, so accustomed to living without food, was the only one still alive. The cell was needed for new victims and so a guard came and injected his left arm with carbolic acid. He leaned up against the wall and died smiling serenely.

"No one has greater love," Jesus said during the Last Supper, "than to lay down his life for his friends." In the midst of a modern Golgotha, St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe followed Jesus on that path of the greatest love of all.

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.