I didn’t hear St. Maximilian Kolbe’s story until a few years into my conversion to Catholicism.
When I finally heard it, though, it shook me a little, because his sacrifice was a level of devotion to Christ that I had never really read about before outside of the Bible.
He gave his life not for his wife, his child, his parent, best friend, or a sibling. He gave his life for a fellow prisoner at Auschwitz.
That was the moment I fully “got” why priests, especially in the Latin Rite, do not marry. In imitation of Christ, they sacrifice wife and children for the ability to lay down their lives for their flock, though maybe not always in physical death.
Like I said, St. Maximilian Kolbe’s story shook me, because I had not really encountered a modern story like his. In Western society, with our watered-down Christianity, we are insulted from the harsh and raw realities of what it really means to be a disciple of Christ.
I wondered if I had St. Maximilian Kolbe’s level of devotion to Christ.
My understanding growing up and, even into my thirties, was that Christianity was supposed to make your life easy.
But that is not true. It is, however, meant to give your life purpose and, consequently, it will ask hard things of you.
St. Maximilian Kolbe once wrote, “You must be prepared for moments of darkness, anguish, uncertainty, fear, sometimes very insistent temp-tations, and suffering of the body and of the soul–that are a hundred times more severe. In fact, if there were nothing to bear, for what would you go to heaven? Without struggle, victory would be impossible and without victory there can be no crown, there can be no reward. Therefore, from now on be prepared for anything.”
Be grateful for St. Maximilian Kolbe’s example, Catholic Pilgrims. Not because we should want to die, but because we should want to truly live in Christ.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us!
