Just five days ago, the Church celebrated the feast of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, virgin and martyr. You may not recognize the name this woman was given when she entered the convent. You may know her by the name of Edith Stein. She was a Polish atheist who became a dedicated Catholic and later joined the Carmelite community. To protect her religious community St. Teresa moved from the Carmelite house near Cologne to another Carmelite house at Echt in the Netherlands to protect her Cologne sisters from torture by the Nazis. Eventually she was rounded up and brought to Auschwitz for "resettlement." She was murdered on August 9th.
Now five days later we celebrate the feast of another Polish saint, born four years after Edith Stein. Maximilian Kolbe was born in 1894 and ordained a priest in 1918. A writer, Maximilian founded a Franciscan house near Warsaw where the friars welcomed refugees during World War II. In February , 1941, Maximilian was arrested and also was sent to Auschwitze.
While in the prison camp, Fr. Maximilian volunteered to step into the line for another man who was married and the father of several children and convicted to die. On August 14th, Fr. Maximilian finished his mission on this earth.
Gratefully most of us do not expect to face such a future or such punishment as Fr. Maximilian Kolbe did. However, what we challenges we do face are far from what was asked of Maximilian.
It was always a special moment when I would visit the church in Rome where this man celebrated his first Mass ... only two blocks from where I would stay when working with the Papal Foundation in Rome. Many a day I would spend an hour at the same altar, praying to the picture of Mary Immaculate. It was this same picture that is said to have brought a great Jewish mind, Alphone Ratisbonne, from his atheism to Catholicism. Throughout each day, pilgrims unaware of the special significance of the picture and that two saints came from the very small church now come to pray.
