Fr. Kolbe's prison photo, 1941 Today is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and yesterday the feast of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who always wanted to return to heaven on a feast day of Our Lady. He was arrested May of 1941 at his friary for the capital crime of running the largest community of Catholic brothers and priests in the world—over 700 Franciscans in his “City of the Immaculata” about an hour outside of Warsaw. They took him to Auschwitz where the commander told him that “you have come not to a health spa but a German concentration camp. Here Jews have the right to live one week, priests one month, and the rest of you three months.” Fr. Kolbe beat the odds by surviving three months, but in the end he gave himself freely in place of another man, a Polish army sergeant named Francis, who had seven children. On August 14, 1941, the guards came into his cell to find him still alive after three weeks without food and water. He was the last man of the ten condemned prisoners to die, and he did so only after they injected him with a lethal dose of carbolic acid. He wanted to go back to heaven on a feast day of Our Lady, but he missed it by one day. Or did he? I’ve discovered, now that I offer Masses in both the new and older calendars, that in Kolbe’s day August 14 was the Vigil Mass of the Assumption. He did die on a day of Our Lady, and what a day! This is the day she goes ahead of us to heaven, to make room for us in God’s Kingdom. She went, body and soul, but poor Fr. Kolbe’s body was incinerated in Hitler’s ovens and tossed to the winds. But like a good mother, Mary Immaculate will gather up each and every particle of his body, which is precious to her. She will welcome Fr. Kolbe, and all her children, to the home of her Son Jesus Christ.
Yesterday I offered the extraordinary form of the Mass, and so the Vigil of the Assumption. But I told the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day was celebrated in ordinary form Masses throughout the world. He died on the Vigil of Our Lady’s Assumption. He lives forever with her in the life of the world to come.
Yesterday I offered the extraordinary form of the Mass, and so the Vigil of the Assumption. But I told the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day was celebrated in ordinary form Masses throughout the world. He died on the Vigil of Our Lady’s Assumption. He lives forever with her in the life of the world to come.
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