St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe: True Christian Knight (1894-1941) by Chris White

 

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  Romans 12:21

In September of 1939 Hitler’s army invaded Poland and touched off World War II and one of the darkest chapters in the history of the 20^th Century.  The reasons for Hitler’s invasion of Poland were manifold and will not be rehearsed in this article (an excellent overview can be found on Vox.com here: http://www.vox.com/2014/9/1/6084029/hitlers-invasion-of-poland-explained) but in terms of human pain, the Poles felt the weight of Nazi oppression in ways many others in Europe did not.   Not only did they watch in horror as 6 million of their Jewish neighbors were “deported” to the Nazi death camps, but they themselves, a strongly Catholic people, found their faith and culture targeted for destruction.

Nazi March in Warsaw 1939

Father Maximilian Kolbe was a 45 year old priest at the time of the invasion. He had returned to his Polish homeland just three years earlier due to the health problems he was experiencing after years of missionary service in Japan and later India.  As a young man, Kolbe had dream that inspired him to found a Christian knighthood.  This knighthood, called Knights of the Immaculata, was devoted to virtuous living, prayer, service, suffering, and defense of the Catholic church against it’s enemies.   Membership grew in Poland to nearly 800 and soon Fr. Kolbe founded a religious community which in turn built the largest publishing house in the nation.  Their magazine alone had one million subscribers.  In addition to this, they published a Polish newspaper which was quite critical of the Nazi agenda.

Kolbe's Arrest by the Nazis

When the Nazi’s overran Poland, Fr. Kolbe was quickly targeted for arrest and elimination.  He was a threat to the regime as the head of a religious order and major publisher.  He was also known to have hidden thousands of Jews and Polish refugees in the different monasteries of his order.  Before long he found himself as prisoner #16670 in the notorious  Auschwitz Concentration camp.

During his imprisonment, Fr. Kolbe resolved to continue his ministry as a priest to the prisoners.  His was an unusual parish behind electric fences, razor wire, and guard towers.   Certainly clandestine services were offered whenever possible, but most of his ministry centered on simply encouraging his fellow prisoners to trust in the love and care of God in the midst of the evil and darkness that hemmed them in on all sides.

 In July of 1941, 3 prisoners had managed a near miraculous escape from the camp.  The commandant of Auschwitz decided to retaliate with greater force to scare the rest of the prisoners away from thinking of another escape.  He randomly selected 10 men who would be placed in an underground bunker without food or water until they died.  One of the men selected was a recently captured sergeant in the Polish army named  Franciszek Gajowniczek.  When called forward to join the group of the condemned Gajowniczek broke down and cried out “my wife, my children!” in fear. 

Standing in the assembly of prisoners from cellblock 14 and watching all this was Father Kolbe.  Suddenly he stepped forward from the group and spoke to the guards.

“I wish to die for that man.  I am old; he has a wife and children.”

“Identify yourself prisoner!”  

“I am a Catholic priest” 

 For no known reason, the exchange was allowed.  Gajowniczek was sent to his cellblock and Kolbe and the others were led off to be stripped naked and thrown into the pitch black of the starvation bunker.

Father Kolbe offers himself

The desired screams of pain and madness that were to strike terror in the hearts of the other prisoners never materialized.  Instead hymns and prayers were overheard as the prisoners suffered together.  After two weeks seven of the group had died a slow agonizing death, while Kolbe and two others hung on to life having only their own urine to drink.  The commandant, wanting to use the bunker again ordered Kolbe and the others to be finished off by lethal injection.   Kolbe and his fellow prisoners were incinerated in the ovens of Auschwitz.

Did Kolbe’s sacrifice make a difference?  In the life of one man it did.  Franciszek Gajowniczek, the prisoner whose life was saved, lived through the war and was freed from Auschwitz by the allied forces.  After a year-long search he was able to locate and reunite with his wife Helena.  Their two sons were killed by a bombing raid on Warsaw during the war.

Auschwitz in Poland

When Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian Kolbe in 1982, Gajowniczek was present at the ceremony.  For the remainder of his life (he died in 1995), Franciszek Gajowniczek spoke to groups of people around the world about the gift of life he received because of the love of God and the love of Fr. Kolbe for a complete stranger.

Gajowniczek in 1982

Father Kolbe once wrote “In this world, Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future.  The conflict with hell cannot be engaged by men, not even the most clever.”  Sometimes evil must be confronted with words and force if necessary.  That is the right thing to do and under certain conditions even the Christian thing to do.  But there are times when evil confront us individually with such great force we are powerless to fight it.  By accepting and enduring the onslaught of evil against us, we have not succumbed at all, but, like Christ and Maximilian Kolbe, we have overcome evil with good.

Kolbe was declared by Pope John Paul II (himself a fellow Pole who suffered under the Nazi occupation) the patron saint of “our difficult century.”  Flowers are placed next to the starvation bunker in Auschwitz by an unknown patron each week.  He is remembered in the Catholic Church worldwide on August 15^th.

Pope Benedict prays in Kolbe's cell

Sources

Adels, Jill Haak.  The Wisdom of the Saints : An Anthology. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987)

“Maximilian Kolbe”  Butler’s Lives of the Saints.  Bernard Bangley Ed. (Brewster : Paraclete Press, 2005)

“Maximilian Maria Kolbe”  Dictionary of Christian Biography.  Michael Walsh Ed.  (Collegeville : The Liturgical Press, 2001)

Saint of the Day.  Leonard Foley O.F.M.  Ed.  Revised Pat McCloskey O.F.M.  (Cincinnati : St. Anthony Messenger Press, 2001)

The Oxford University History of the Twentieth Century.  Michael Howard and Wm. Roger Louis Eds.  (New York : Oxford University Press, 1998)

Isidore of Seville : Patron Saint of the Internet? by Chris White

   

  Saint Isidore of Seville (560-636) grew up in a home known for its Christian love and, I say this tongue-in-cheek, its overachievers.  As it turns out, all three of Isidore’s siblings are also canonized saints and in their lifetimes were great leaders of the faith in a time of great turbulence.

     Little is known about Isidore’s early years.  He was born in Roman Iberia (modern day Spain) during the period where the Western Roman Empire was slowly collapsing under the weight of huge Indo-European migrations within its borders.  If you were Roman, these people were called ‘barbarians’ because their language and customs seemed so undeveloped.  In reality, these newcomers to Spain were a people known as the Visigoths.  And while some of their manners could use some improvement, they were largely a Christian people although their doctrines about Jesus differed greatly from those that have always been held by Catholics and Protestants.  In Isidore’s world, his people who had been there forever, were being increasingly crowded out by the Visigoths.  They lived in and shared the same homeland, but they were clearly two separate peoples.

     When Isidore was in his early teens he was sent to live with his older brother Leander who was given full charge of his education.  Leander was the bishop of Seville (a leader of all the churches in the area), and a highly disciplined and educated monk.  While Leander had the momentum of many years of living the monastic life, he apparently had little sympathy for his younger brother who was just starting out.  He pushed Isidore very hard expecting him to make great strides in his education (which apparently was at a university level by our standards today) and this would eventually press Isidore to his breaking point emotionally.

     According the Leonard Foley O.F.M.,  Isidore  ran away from his brother's house because he couldn't take the pressurized environment anymore. One day, while hiding out from his brother in the woods, he watched drops of water falling on a stone.  Even though each drop seemed small and inconsequential, the constant dripping of water had worn a hole into the hard rock.  It occurred to Isidore that he could do with his education what the little drops of water did.  If he remained persistent and tackled things little by little, he would eventually learn all his older brother wanted him to learn and thus wear a hole through the rock of his own ignorance (Saint of the Day, 4^th edition,  p.70).

     Soon Isidore returned to his brother’s house and eventually mastered Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and a host of other subjects.  In fact, Isidore soon fell in love with learning and made his brother’s richly endowed library his new home.  As he grew in his learning, his older brother trained him to read not only Christian books, but also the classical and pagan literature of the Greco-Roman empire.  Isidore was learning the spiritual practice of reading with discernment, where non-Christian works are analyzed not only for their philosophical errors (as to refute them) but also their usefulness to human experience and understanding.  For all truth is God's truth, man merely discovers it.

     Eventually Isidore’s brother Leander died, and Isidore became the natural choice to replace him as the bishop of Seville.  In his role as bishop, Isidore was given great wisdom and opportunity not only to build up the church, but to unite and build up his nation.  First of all, Isidore had opportunity to speak with key leaders in the Visigothic nation and was able to bring several of them into the Roman Catholic church (remember, in Late Antiquity, this was the only true church around).  Second, but of equal importance, was that in every parish in Spain, Isidore established high quality schools for the young.  Some of these schools specialized in training people for ministry, while others focused on other specialties such as science, medicine, and law.  Not only did these schools educate multiple generations of people, they elevated the Roman-Visigothic society overall, creating a single and learned culture based on the rule of law and united in Christian belief.

     But how does this tie-in with Isidore being the patron saint of the internet?  That brings us to his greatest achievement which is called The Etymologies.  While Isidore was called to the active life of leading his community, there was that other side of him that developed in his brother’s library.  The quiet and contemplative life of research and learning was actually his true passion and the fruit of this passion was a 20 volume, 448 chapter encyclopedia of virtually every subject, writer, and piece of literature from the ancient world.  In addition to this, Isidore wrote books on prayer, Christian doctrine, and even a history of the Visigoths!

     The completion of The Etymologies earned Isidore of Seville the nickname: “Schoolmaster of the Middle Ages” by later historians because his work was read and used throughout Europe for nearly 1000 years.  It was not only the basis for learning, but sometimes was the only place a person could find out about an ancient philosopher or piece of literature.  This ancient encyclopedia would serve as a model for others in later generations who would seek to collect, systematize, and organize all forms of knowledge for the sake of posterity.

     While Isidore of Seville was canonized in 1722, in recent years the Vatican has suggested that he is the patron saint for the internet.  During a general papal audience in Rome (2008), Pope Benedict XIII spoke of Saint Isidore:  "...his nagging worry not to overlook anything that human experience had produced in the history of his homeland and of the whole world is admirable.  Isidore did not want to lose anything that man had acquired in the epochs of antiquity, regardless of whether they had been pagan, Jewish, or Christian.”

     I think if Isidore  were able visit the world of today, he would be impressed with Google and how fast it works, but he wouldn’t be shocked by it.  For in the 7^th century, Isidore of Seville was essentially the embodiment of Google before the computer age.