A Psalm for Saint Maximillian
I cry out to Yahweh ;
he answers from his holy mountain.
Psalm 3:4
14th August
Christian witness amidst 20th century suffering
Some people's lives seem to epitomise the suffering of millions, but also to shine with a Christian response to it. One such person was Maximilian Kolbe, 1894 - 1941, a Franciscan priest of Poland, and publisher extraordinary.
Maximilian was born at Zdunska Wola, near Lodz, where his parents, devout Christians, worked in a cottage weaving industry. Like thousands of others at the time, the family and their village was ground into poverty by Russian exploitation. In 1910 Maximilian entered the Franciscan Order, and studied at Rome. After his ordination in 1919, Maximilian returned to Poland, where he was sent to teach church history in a seminary. But a new factor had entered his life: he diagnosed with tuberculosis.
Living in post-war Poland was difficult enough, but with tuberculosis as well - most people would have quietly withered away. Not Maximilian Kolbe. Instead, the tuberculosis gave Maximilian a sense of urgency - a sense of the brief transitoriness of this life. He knew his time was slipping away. Instead of teaching history, he determined to do something to help the Christians living in Poland now, in the tatters of Europe after the First World War. And so he founded a magazine for Christian readers in Cracow, who badly needed effective apologetics to help them hold to their faith in a chaotic world.
Soon, the obsolete printing presses (which were operated by Maximilian's fellow priests and lay brothers) were working overtime - the magazine's circulation had leapt to 45,000. Then the printing presses were moved to a town near Warsaw, Niepokalanow, where Maximilian now founded a Franciscan community which combined prayer w"
