By JAMES MONTI
The Writings of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, edited by Antonella Di Piazza, FKMI; published by Nerbini International, Lugano, Italy, 2016; distributed by Marytown Press, Libertyville, IL. Two volumes, 2557 pp.
For some years now the Polish Conventual Franciscan priest St. Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) has been widely recognized for his heroic witness as a martyr of charity in the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz. What has not received as much attention is his great Marian apostolate that led him to found the first Catholic “media empire” decades before the late Mother Angelica embarked upon hers.
The publication earlier this year of the first complete English-language edition of Fr. Kolbe’s writings is an event of historic proportions that reveals the rich spirituality, tireless apostolic zeal, and genius of this saint as never before.
As we would expect, on virtually every page of Fr. Kolbe’s writings, the Blessed Virgin, “the Immaculata,” is mentioned, praised, thanked, or invoked. Much of what he has to say concerns the founding and propagation of his great Marian apostolate of total consecration to Mary, the Militia Immaculatae. A November 15, 1919 conference that Fr. Kolbe gave in Krakow to Conventual Franciscan clerics only a year and a half after his priestly Ordination is a tour de force reflection upon what it means to live the spirituality of the Militia Immaculatae (the “MI”), which he sums up as “the total and unlimited giving of the self to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary Immaculate” (n. 1248, volume 2, p. 2161).
The purposes he sets for this apostolate are “the glory of God, and not only a greater glory, but the greatest possible glory” (p. 2160) and “the salvation and greatest sanctification of the greatest possible number of souls” (p. 2164).
Time and again Fr. Kolbe speaks of his great ideal of loving God and the Blessed Virgin “without limits.” As he explains, “We must love God without limits, because He loved us without limits and showed such love by coming down to this earth in order to lift, enlighten, strengthen and redeem the guilty” (n. 1248, conference, November 15, 1919, volume 2, p. 2160). Answering a letter from his friars in which they express their aspirations of making a total oblation of themselves in the service of the Immaculata even to the point of martyrdom, he comments, “For that is, in fact, our main characteristic . . . the limitlessness of love” (n. 461, letter, October 27, 1932, volume 1, p. 978).
This love in turn leads to action, an apostolate of love: “. . . we shall burn with the desire to save souls. . . .” (n. 1248, conference, November 15, 1919, volume 2, p. 2168). Such apostolic zeal transcends the boundaries of time and place: “. . . to elicit such love toward the Immaculata by kindling it in one’s heart and to communicate such fire to those who live around us; to kindle all souls, and each one individually, with such love: the souls who live now and shall live in the future. To set such flame of love within oneself ablaze ever more forcefully and without restrictions, all over the earth: that is our goal” (n. 1326, unpublished manuscript, August 5-20, 1940, volume 2, p. 2309).
On April 28, 1918, the day of his priestly Ordination, Fr. Kolbe began a “Holy Mass Register” in which he composed a list of all the intentions he intended to make for each and every Mass he would celebrate over the years to come. The list, to which he added further entries over time, is amazingly wide ranging — family, friends, and acquaintances of course, but also “enemies”, and every non-Catholic on the face of the Earth (asking for their conversion “All and each individually”).
And yes, dear readers, he even thought to include you and me in his Masses: “For all and each person presently alive and who will live in the future” (n. 1337, volume 2, pp. 2334-2337).
Among the saints to whom Fr. Kolbe was particularly devoted was St. Gemma Galgani (1878-1903); she is mentioned 17 times in his writings, including the following letter to his mother: “I am sure, Mama, that you have not had the chance to read the biography of Gemma Galgani. . . . I have already read it three times and I love it. It did more for me than a course of spiritual exercises” (n. 58, March 1, 1921, volume 1, p. 437). In his conference given to fellow Franciscans two years earlier, he observed, “Gemma Galgani is already known even in China and goes everywhere looking for many souls” (n. 1248, November 15, 1919, volume 2, p. 2168).
No sooner would Fr. Kolbe take a particular liking to a saint than he would recruit him or her as a heavenly colleague in his grand enterprise for the Immaculata. Thus in a letter discussing his plan to acquire for the friars’ print shop a giant trimming machine he calls “that ‘reptile’,” he artlessly relates whom he is expecting to handle the financing of this purchase: “Gemma Galgani will pay the bill” (n. 77, February 16, 1923, volume 1, p. 465).
Ten years later, as Providence would have it, Fr. Kolbe happened to be in Rome on May 14, 1933 when a priest he ran into told him Gemma Galgani was being beatified that very morning. In a notebook entry he tells of watching Gemma’s portrait being unveiled at St. Peter’s high altar, and how in the evening he venerated as a relic an inkwell Gemma had used (n. 991S, notebook 4, May-June 1933, volume 2, pp. 1762-1763).
A significant portion of Fr. Kolbe’s writings comprise the articles he wrote for the MI’s Polish periodical Rycerz Niepokalanej. In one of these essays he recounts an amazing conversation he started on a train ride, gently debating with an agnostic academic to persuade him of the existence of God (n. 1024, January 1923, volume 2, pp. 1824-1827). Such train ride conversations were a favorite evangelical venue for him.
In another article Fr. Kolbe defends the doctrine of papal infallibility, explaining not only what it is but also what it is not:
“The Pope is infallible only in what concerns faith and morals, and not every time he speaks or writes on these subjects either, but only when, as Pastor of the whole Church and with his supreme apostolic power, he declares that such and such a statement regarding faith and morals is either a revealed truth or closely linked with revealed truths, and therefore everyone must accept it. If follows, therefore, that the Pope is by no means infallible in what refers exclusively to the natural sciences, politics, and so on, and even in matters of faith and morals on those occasions when he speaks as a simple priest or as an expert” (n. 1060, June 1924, p. 1877).
A Candle
One of the unanticipated pleasures of exploring this compendium of Fr. Kolbe’s writings is the sheer wealth of personal vignettes that appear in these pages. He tells of everything from eating a chocolate bar for dinner while in Italy (n. 991 S, notebook 4, May-June 1933, volume 2, p. 1761) to partaking of the wafer known as the oplatek that Poles traditionally share on Christmas Eve (n. 474, letter, December 24, 1932, p. 990).
He also records unexpected acts of kindness from strangers, such as the following in a letter to his mother: “I had still to recite part of the Breviary, but the train car was dark. I got close to the window and prayed in the light of the station lamp. A Jew noticed my difficulty and he immediately offered me a candle. It was sufficient. To thank him I vowed to remember him in the Holy Mass” (n. 69, October 23, 1922, volume 1, p. 458).
It is in another letter to his mother, written on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of Mary in 1932, that Fr. Kolbe offers a profound meditation upon how the whole universe reflects the goodness of God:
“Today, the Feast of our Loving Heavenly Mother, I received a letter with the ‘oplatek’ from my loving earthly mother, who is the reflection of the Heavenly Mother, just as the Heavenly Mother is the reflection of God’s Goodness, of God’s Heart. Divine perfections, which radiate from the inexpressible life of the Most Holy Trinity, spread across the universe in countless reverberations, like an echo. And so the heart, starting from creatures, rises up to know and love God Himself in the Most Holy Trinity. However it also loves those reflections, because they come from God, are created by God, belong entirely to God” (n. 469, December 8, 1932, volume 1, p. 986).
The entries in Fr. Kolbe’s notebooks detailing his travels in the Far East are filled with fascinating details of what he saw and experienced. His June 1932 account of his passage through the Strait of Malacca (between Malaya and Sumatra), known to mariners for its violent thunderstorms, is harrowing: “Storm at sea. Monsoon. On the morning of the 17th I did not even celebrate Holy Mass, for fear of spilling the most precious Blood. ‘There is no solid ground under our feet’: everything is moving!!. . .” (n. 991F, notebook 4, January-June 1932, volume 2, p. 1734).
In an article about the saints, Fr. Kolbe observes that “God has assigned each person a specific mission in this world,” noting the wide variety of ways by which the saints fulfilled their respective missions. But he concludes, “Their only purpose was God and His holy love. . . .” (n. 1010, June 1922, volume 2, pp. 1808, 1811).
This purpose is the wellspring for all of Fr. Kolbe’s writings, making this new compendium of the martyr’s words a priceless source of inspiration for the New Evangelization.
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