Saint Maximilian Kolbe is too often reduced to his heroic gesture in the Auschwitz camp, when he took the place of a father condemned to starve to death. But his path to holiness is not limited to this ultimate sacrifice: it is the culmination of a life given to God and entirely consecrated to the Immaculate Conception.
The Response to Freemasonry
In 1917, during the bicentennial commemorations of Freemasonry, thousands of people marched in Rome with blasphemous banners proclaiming: "Satan must reign in the Vatican and the Pope will be his servant."
Then a simple Franciscan student, Maximilian Kolbe was deeply marked by this attack against the Church. With his rector's permission, he founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose mission was clear: to fight the enemies of the Church with spiritual weapons. One of his favored means was the distribution of the Miraculous Medals, received from the Virgin by Saint Catherine Labouré.
He exhorted: "Distribute her medal everywhere: to children, to the young, to the elderly, to the lost, to sinners, to those who do not go to church, so that all may place themselves under the protection of the Immaculate Conception and find the strength to resist the temptations and errors of our time."
The Danger of Communism
A second event deeply marked the young priest: the Bolshevik invasion, miraculously repelled during the Battle of Warsaw in August 1920. Kolbe then understood that communism represented for Christian Europe a threat as grave, if not more so, than Freemasonry.
His weapon was the press. Through the newspaper The Knight of the Immaculata, distributed to a popular and poor audience, he proclaimed the Gospel, without unnecessary polemics but with luminous clarity.
He wrote: "The heart of man is too great to be satisfied with money, pleasures, or passing glory. It aspires to an infinite and eternal good, and this good is God."
The newspaper quickly reached 70,000 copies in Poland and was even distributed in Japan, where it took on particular importance after the atomic bomb in Nagasaki.
The War and the Supreme Trial
The third decisive moment was, of course, the Second World War. Just as his missionary work sought to expand to radio and television, everything was interrupted. Poland was devastated: six million of its inhabitants were exterminated and millions more displaced.
Kolbe, for his part, continued to rescue, to print, to console. In his writings, he reminded: "Happiness based on a lie cannot last. Only truth remains an indestructible foundation for individuals as for humanity."
These words drew upon him the fury of the Nazis. Arrested, deported to several camps, he ended up in Auschwitz. It was there that his supreme offering sealed his path to holiness: giving his life in place of a father.
The Crowning of a Life of Virtue
Saint John Paul II, during Kolbe's canonization, insisted: he was not raised to the altars solely for his heroic sacrifice at Auschwitz, but for his entire life lived in heroic virtue and fidelity to the Immaculate Conception. His final act was the completion of an existence already offered to God.
Thus, Saint Maximilian Kolbe remains a model of spiritual combat against the enemy powers of the Church, of total trust in the Virgin Mary, and of perfect abandonment to the divine will.