Saturday, August 3, 2019

MAXIMILLAN KOLBE


“Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down His life for His friends.”
-John 15:13

It was 3pm in one of the last days of July 1941 at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The sirens began to shriek and German sentries shouldered their guns. There had been an escape. Silently the men of Block 14 prayed that the escapee had not been from their block. That evening their worst fears were confirmed. The missing prisoner had been from Block 14.

The next day, the remaining 600 men from Block 14 were forced to stand on the parade ground under the broiling sun. Those who collapsed were left to die where they lay. At the day’s end, the deputy commander, Fritsch, arrived to announced the fate of the terrified men.

“The fugitive has not been found,” barked Fritsch. “In reprisal for your comrade’s escape, 10 of you will die by starvation. Next time it will be 20.”

The ten were selected. One of those men, Franciszek Gajowniezek, a Polish army sergeant, was sobbing, “My wife and my children.” Suddenly, a Polish Fransciscan priest, Maximillan Kolbe, pushed his way to the front as guards sighted their rifles on his chest. “I want to talk to the commander,” he said, looking Fritsch straight in the eye. “I want to die in the place of the prisoner,” he said pointing to the sobbing Gajowniezed.

Maximillan Kolbe died in place of a man who bore the sentence of death. In all probability, God will never ask you to make the decision Kolbe made. Yet He does ask you to make a decision – for to love demands sacrifice for someone else. None of us has the right to live selfishly, for all of us have been the recipients, in some way, of the love that prompted Maximillan Kolbe to give up his life.

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