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St. Maximilian Kolbe made words of Christ his own |
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By Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
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Wednesday, 19 May 2010 |
On Tuesday, May 11, the members of Serra Clubs from around the archdiocese hosted a dinner for our priests in honor of the Year for Priests. I was asked to address those in attendance. The following is the speech I delivered:
In August of 1941, in the depths of the hell that was Auschwitz Prison Camp, a male prisoner was found missing by the Gestapo guards. And so, when the morning count of prisoners came up short, plans for memorable retribution were made.
 That They May All
Be One
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt
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On that terrible day, 10 prisoners would be selected to be starved to death in the notorious block 13, as a way of dissuading the prison population from future escape attempts.
The story is a familiar one to many, but bears repeating in this Year
for Priests.
Among the prisoners in the death camp at that time was Father Maximilian
Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar and priest, known to the guards as
“prisoner 16770.”
Miracle of grace
Imprisoned for his nationality and for his noble profession, Father
Kolbe was lined up with the rest of the cell block from which the 10 to
be starved would be selected.
One by one the Gestapo guards selected their victims from the huddled
mass of walking dead.
Most remained silent as they were summoned forward to be led to their
grave. But one prisoner cried out as he was pushed forward, unable to
bear the weight of this very real nightmare: “I am a father and a
husband. Dear God! What of my children!?!”
The Gestapo guards were unmoved by the cries for pity and pushed the
poor man all the more forcefully into the assembled group of victims.
But at that moment of darkness and horror, a miracle of grace was
witnessed. Calmly, peacefully, a firm voice stated clearly: “I am a
Roman Catholic priest, and I wish to take the place of that prisoner.”
It was the serene but powerful voice of Father Kolbe, who stepped
forward as he spoke. The commandant paused in his brutal task, staring
at Father Kolbe with indignant disbelief. All who looked on expected the
worst; the execution of the Polish priest by pistol and the addition of
more victims for such a stunning disregard for protocol.
After what seemed to be an eternity of waiting for the feared conclusion
of this awful scene, the commandant’s shocking words were uttered,
“Very well.”
Francis was thrown back among his brother prisoners, and Father Kolbe
was pushed into the group of the condemned, with whom he was escorted to
block 13 to die.
It took several days for the victims to die, and Father Kolbe was the
last. Through it all, the accounts from witnesses tell of Father
Kolbe’s serenity and the service he rendered to his little flock on that
German Calvary. He encouraged them to hope in God and to pray for their
executioners. Even the guards were struck by the peace with which he
suffered.
At long last, Father Kolbe died by lethal injection on Aug. 14, one day
before what would soon become the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary.
When Father Kolbe was canonized by his fellow Pole, Pope John Paul II,
in October of 1982, Francis, the man whom Kolbe died to save, was
present in St. Peter’s Square to witness such a personal, yet monumental
event.
One example of heroism
The story of Father Kolbe is a remarkable one, but it is not unique in
the 2,000-year history of God’s holy church.
How many heroic priests have shed their blood in witness to the faith
and in love of their people? How many, even today, live their priesthood
under constant threat of violence and death? How many have said in
their own way and in their own language, “I am a Roman Catholic priest”
and have stepped forward to take upon themselves the trials, sufferings
and struggles of the people entrusted to their care? Thousands,
millions — “and we are witnesses of these things.”
Kolbe had been preparing for his day of heroism and triumph every day of
his priestly life; for every day of his priestly life he said the words
of consecration, those words of self-sacrifice: “This is my body which
will be given up for you.”
The words of Christ had become Kolbe’s own, as they are meant to become
the words of every priest. By the priest’s life of sacrificial love, a
life lived totally for others, he becomes more and more like the master
whom he serves and whose words he dares to utter. The priest, like the
host he fractures, is meant to be broken for love and poured out like
the chalice he raises and consumes.
Occasions of witness, grace
Now this may appear to be awfully flowery language for a vocation in
which the duties can be routinely ordinary, and in which even the
glorious celebration of God’s sacraments can become so familiar and,
yes, perhaps even burdensome at times.
How many of us have had to bite our lip when the tardy penitent rushes
into the confessional when we were just about to leave, only to have
this latecomer spend 10 long minutes confessing his sins? How many of us
have taken a disappointed sigh when a funeral comes in on our day off
or the emergency line rings when we are finally fading off after a full
day of handling various demands and crises?
These are realities that we all have faced — the confluence of our own
humanity and the humanity of the people entrusted to our care. It is not
the high drama of the Kolbe story to be sure, but such moments are
occasions of witness and grace all the same.
The principal reason our Holy Father designated this year for priests
was not simply to affirm us in our sacerdotal dignity, as important as
this is. It was rather to remind us of the sanctity to which the priest
is called and the sacrificial heart that must be his.
And do we ever need that kind of reminder! We need it because we can
become dull to the mission for which we were ordained, and can so easily
become bitter and disillusioned with the brokenness of the church or
discouraged by our own frailty.
The great patron of priests, St. John Vianney, was made of the same
stuff that we are. We do ourselves a great disservice, and dishonor the
saints themselves, to imagine that the saints were men and women made of
porcelain, unscathed by the struggles of human appetite and fatigue.
No — John Vianney, like Maximilian Kolbe, was a man like us. And yet he
chose to make the words he prayed every day at the altar his own. His
will had been inflamed by the Sacred Heart of Jesus, a symbol itself of
the human will of Christ impelled by the Divine Love of the Eternal
Logos.
So, too, our own wills, inclined to defensiveness, to selfishness, to
pettiness, must be made pure and holy by constant contact with the heart
of Jesus, whom we hold in our very hands every day when we celebrate
the Mass.
Is it too much to think that Father Kolbe was afraid when he stepped
forward on that hot summer day in Auschwitz? That he thought, if only
for a moment, that this act of love was unnecessary and far too great an
offer to make? He was, after all, one of us. He would not have been the
first to say, “Take this cup away from me.”
And yet Father Kolbe’s statement of love, “I will take his place,” is a
moving reminder that this Polish priest had learned how to love as he
was loved — sacrificially and even unto death.
May God bless us, his priests, we who are sinful men but even as such
who have been called to give our lives for God’s people. May he be
merciful with us and give us his grace.
And may St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. John Vianney, along with all the
great ones who have gone before us, intercede for us, and remind us
every day to make the words of Christ our own: “This is my body, which
has been given up for you.”
God Bless you!
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