To be overpowered by love alone!

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

August 14, 2021: Remembering St. Maximilian Kolbe

Joshua 24: 13-15; Matthew 19:13-15

As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, declares Joshua before the people. He leads them by example! Just like Jesus who made it clear to the people that following him was not always a pleasure trip – ‘the foxes have their holes and the birds have their nest, but the son of man has no place to lay down’ – Joshua too makes it clear that choosing to serve God and giving a word on that, is a challenging task! 

But for children to depend on someone, without too much of thought to their own ego or pride, is a natural capacity. That is what prompted Jesus to say, ‘Unless you become like children you will not enter the Reign.’ And today in the gospel too, Jesus presents the children as the paradigm of the Reign of God. Innocence of the children is from the absence of pride and their docility is from the absence of ego. If we have to remain with the Lord and forever be God’s, the prime enemies we have to do away from within us are – our pride and ego! 

We remember today Maximlian Kolbe, a saint of our times whom I personally look up to with awe! He lived with courage, his call to be a Christian, that is his call to choose God above all else! He took seriously 1 John 3:16 - "... we ought to lay down our lives for our brethren." That is the sign given to us to testify for the absolute choice we have made for God. But how much we cry and complain when someone causes us trouble, or spoils our name, or ruins our prospects...that is a sign that we have other choices which matter to us more! 

Right enough, at the canonisation ceremony, 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 (that was Franciszek Gajowniczek, who was present at the canonisation of the saint). 

Let our choice for God be absolute. If that is the case, nothing can ever overpower us, except love!