+ Our saint today, Maximilian Kolbe, a simple Franciscan priest, was born in 1894 in Poland. Due to several bouts with tuberculosis he remained frail all his life. After his ordination as a priest, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to Our Lady. After receiving a doctorate in theology, he spread the Movement through a magazine entitled "The Knight of the Immaculata" and helped form a community of 800 men, the largest in the world. Maximilian went to Japan where be built a monastery and then to India where he furthered the Movement. In 1936 he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. But in 1941 he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. On July 31, 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner's escape, ten men were chosen to die. Father Kolbe offered himself in place of a young husband and father. He was the last of the ten to die, enduring two weeks of starvation, thirst and neglect. He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in the presence of the man he saved and his family, by Pope John Paul II, in 1982. Today, August 14th is his feast day!
The first reading today from St. John spells it out very beautifully: the way we came to know love was that he laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers! Fr. Kolbe experienced God's love before, during and after his self-sacrificial act of giving his life for a husband and father of children. The husband, father and children, no doubt experienced that same overwhelming love of God demonstrated by so great and act of faith and love by Fr. Kolbe.
The gospel passage reminds us that we are to not only preach the word of God, but give it substance and flesh by our loving one another from the heart no matter what that might entail. God is always with those who give themselves as entirely as they can for the welfare of their brothers and sisters. The fruit of love endure for generations – may we this day continue to tell the story of God's loving actions and saving deeds in our own lives – and send the message down the generations from us!
Precious in the eyes of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones!
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