SAINT FEAST DAY 14 AUGUST: ST MAXIMILIAN KOLBE

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 14th of August

WELCOME!

SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, PRIEST AND MARTYR

Saint Maximilian Kolbe was born in 1894 in Poland and became a Franciscan. He contracted tuberculosis and, though he recovered, he remained frail all his life. Before his ordination as a priest, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to Our Lady. After receiving a doctorate in theology, he spread the Movement through a magazine entitled ‘The Knights of the Immaculata’ and helped form a community of 800 men, the largest in the world.

THE KNIGHTS OF THE IMMACULATA

Maximilian went to Japan where he built a comparable monastery and then on to India where he furthered the Movement. In 1936 he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. But in 1941 he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.

HE OFFERED HIMSELF IN PLACE OF A YOUNG HUSBAND AND FATHER

On July 31, 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner’s escape, ten men were chosen to die. Father Kolbe offered himself in place of a young husband and father. And he was the last to die, enduring two weeks of starvation, thirst, and neglect. He was canonised by Pope John Paul II in 1982. 

Courtesy of “St William of York”

PRAYER:

Grant, we beseech you, almighty God, that we who know how courageously your holy martyr Maximilian confessed the faith, may experience his goodness as he intercedes for us with you. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.