Readings
I - Due. 10: 12-22
II - Mt. 17: 22-27
SAINT MAXIMILIAN MARY KOLBE
Maximilian Mary Kolbe, the Martyr of Charity, was a Polish Conventual Franciscan friar born in Poland in 1894. Maximilian Kolbe was very active in promoting the devotion to the Immaculate Virgin Mary. He is known as the Apostle of Consecration to Mary. At about the age of ten he had a vision of the Virgin Mary. She offered him a white crown and a red crown, representing purity and martyrdom. He chose both, a foreshadowing of his life to come. He was Ordained at 24. Maximilian saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of his time and he decided to combat it. He founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with the witness of the good life, work, prayer and suffering. He also started Knight of the Immaculata, a religious magazine under Mary’s protection to preach the Good News to all nations. For the work of publication he established a “City of the Immaculata” that sheltered 700 of his Franciscan brothers. He later founded another one in Nagasaki, Japan. Both the Militia and the magazine ultimately reached the one-million mark in members and subscribers. His love of God was daily filtered through devotion to Mary. In 1939 City of Immaculata was bombed. Kolbe and the friars were arrested and were released on the feast of Immaculate Conception. In 1941 Fr. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was arrested again and they eventually imprisoned Kolbe in the Auschwitz death camp, where in 1941 he offered to take the place of a man condemned to die in retaliation for an escaped prisoner. His offer was accepted and he died two weeks later on August 14 on the vigil of Mary’s Assumption. Pope Paul VI beatified Maximilian Mary Kolbe in 1971. In 1982, St. Pope John Paul II canonized him as a “martyr of charity,” calling him “patron of our difficult century.” He is the patron saint of journalists, media communications, the family and the chemically addicted.
Today’s Gospel passage is about the payment of temple tax by Jesus. Jesus was never a scandal to anyone. St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was clear about his identity as Christian and as a priest. He witnessed to the love of the Lord by selflessly giving up in the place of the person who had wife and children. May the life of the saint inspire us to live up to our Christian identity.
