Half a Shekel or Life to the Full?

THE WORD AND THE SAINT

August 14, 2023: Remembering St. Maximilian Kolbe
Deuteronomy 10: 12-22; Matthew 17: 22-27

Celebrating St. Maximilian Kolbe, is a challenge we accept to dwell on - a man who did not do anything for the sake of a rule, but for the sake of what his heart prompted him to do for the Lord who loved him. Paying half a shekel was a duty of a slave, according to Jesus. That is not what is asked of a Son or a Daughter. While a slave intends to pay the half shekel that is expected of him, the Son gives the entire life to the Lord, surrenders the totality of one's life, bringing that life to its fullness thus.

God is not to be bribed, declares Moses. You don't try to appease God by being calculative in what you give, trying to pay your due, for your due is your life, not just some money or some fulfilment of a rule. The heaven, the earth, everything that exists therein and my very life belongs to God and what can I possibly give the Lord - nothing less than the whole of my life!

Maxmilian Kolbe, a saint of our times, lived the words that we reflect on in the Liturgy today. 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 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!

When Fr. 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. I am called to give not just half a shekel, but my life to the full.