Memorial of Saint Maximilian Mary Kolbe, priest and martyr

Lectionary: 620A

This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends..

Until the Nazis overran much of Europe, slavery had been abolished from the continent. But with their brand of racist nationalism Hitler's army amassed millions of citizens, Jews, gentiles, and prisoners of war; those who were not murdered outright were enslaved in labor camps. Ill-treated and starved, very few survived long.

Among them was a Polish, Franciscan priest, Father Maximilian Kolbe. As a young man he had suffered tuberculosis and was often forced to retreat to a mountain sanitarium. But, inspired by his love of Mary, he had founded "cities" in Poland and Japan to promote devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. 

When the Germans invaded Poland, he converted his Polish City of the Immaculate, Niepokalanów, into a hospital for wounded soldiers and citizens. And then, despite his pacifism, or perhaps because of it, he was arrested along with thousands of priests, religious, and bishops and imprisoned at Auschwitz.

But the friar priest would not be enslaved. He continued his ministry as a Catholic priest to his fellow prisoners. Hearing confessions; consoling the grieving, frightened, and confused; sharing his starvation rations with his fellows; leading whispered prayer for Catholics and Protestants alike; assisting the wounded to walk and avoid the murderous penalty for weakness: he labored voluntarily among those who were forced to work. The Spirit of God compensated for the weakness of his lungs as he led the prisoners in song and worship. 

When the day came that a commandant arbitrarily selected some prisoners to die to slake his blood thirst, the priest volunteered to take a fellow citizen's place. The young man had worried incessantly about his wife and children and Kolbe prayed with him that he would survive the war. 

The startled commandant, unused to prisoners daring to ask anything, asked the priest, "Who are you?" 

He replied, "I am a priest." 

With that Father Maximilian was permitted to accompany his fellow Catholics into a locked room where they were starved to death. 

No one has greater love than this,

to lay down one's life for one's friends.

We're often forced by circumstances, people, or life to do things we'd rather not. But we have a choice. We can embrace the opportunity or complain about it. The freedom of choice many Americans describe is mostly an illusion. Christians are free to live by the law of love and there is -- and never has been -- a government that can take that freedom from us. 

We look at our options, ask the Lord for guidance, and throw ourselves body and soul into the labor. 

Slaves, obey your human masters in everything, not only when being watched, as currying favor, but in simplicity of heart, fearing the Lord.

Whatever you do, do from the heart, as for the Lord and not for others,

knowing that you will receive from the Lord the due payment of the inheritance; be slaves of the Lord Christ. Colossians 3: 22-24