THE WORD AND THE SAINT

Choice to die was a choice to live!

Remembering St. Maximilian Kolbe - August 14, 2019

Deuteronomy 34: 1-12; Matthew 18: 15-20 (or) Wisdom 3: 1-9; John 15: 12-16

Maxmilian Kolbe, a saint of our times who is looked up with awe! He lived the Words from 1 John 3:16 to the letter - "... we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren." That is the sign given to us to testify for true love - as Jesus himself states in the Gospel, Jn 15:13 - "there can be no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends." It is a choice that Kolbe made, knowing well what is going to be the fallout of that choice. Right enough, Pope John Paul II declared him as 'the Patron Saint of our Difficult Century'. 

A saint from the greatest of all tragedies of the just gone century in the concentration camp of Auschwitz, where Kolbe chose to die in place of another (Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was present at the canonisation of the saint). Let our love be genuine (Rom 12:9); but if it were really so, sure we will have to be prepared for hard times and painful experiences! Celebrating St. Maximilian Kolbe, is a challenge we accept to dwell on a man who did not just read the Word or hear it, but someone who lived it. He did it not for the sake of a duty or a work given to him, but for the sake of what his heart that prompted him to do for the Lord who loved him, exactly what the Lord did to him. 

That is why when Kolbe decided to die for a man whom he knew not, he did not consider that act a great feat. For him that was what he could do, all that he had to give at the moment was  his life and he gave it - he loved his Lord with the whole of his heart, with the whole of his strength, with his very life. The Love of Christ urges us!