A burning fire in your guts
He is a Franciscan whose spirituality is based on total dedication to the Immaculate. In fact, he is a forerunner of the apostolate through the media, since he created a publisher to publish the glory of Mary. This man of God once said: “Love never rests, but spreads like a devouring fire”… In fact, when he was a prisoner at Auschwitz, he volunteered to die in place of a father, for which the Nazis burned his body, making the words he had written in his childhood diary come true: “My ideal: to live for the Immaculate. I would like my ashes to be scattered to the four points of the universe for her glory.”“. His fiery heart is already inflaming the third millennium generation!
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Biography of Maximilian Kolbe
Rajmund Kolbe was born in Lodz (Poland) on January 8, 1894. His parents were very religious people, in fact, his father was a member of the Franciscan Third Order, and together with his family, they chose to live poorly for love of the Lord. The family had a great devotion to the virgin mary and made an annual pilgrimage on foot to Czestochowa. At the age of 10, Rajmund experienced a very moving event: during an argument with his mother, she angrily asked him “what will become of your life?”. Shocked by this question, the boy went to pray at church to have a little more clarity, it was then that the Blessed Virgin appeared to him holding two crowns in her hands, a white one that means purity and another red that indicates martyrdom. Rajmond humbly accepted the two crowns.
At the age of 13, Raimundo entered the Franciscan seminary, became a friar at the age of 16 and decided to call himself Maximiliano. Later, he went to study in Rome and made his perpetual profession at the age of 19, taking the name of Maximilian Mary. In 1917, anticlericalism was quite virulent in Rome, supported by a Masonic current. However, the young friar wanted Christians to be more active thanks to modern technical means, so he decided to found the Mission of the Immaculate and create a Marian magazine called The Knight of the Immaculate. The goal of all this was for people to love the Lord. Later, he was ordained a priest at the age of 28 and sent to Poland, where he obtained land to found the City of the Immaculate: built a chapel, a carpentry and printing workshops with modern machines to distribute the magazine in more than 60,000 copies. In fact, other brothers joined the cause and together they consecrated themselves to the Blessed Virgin and lived very poorly.
In 1930, he was part of the project in which it was intended to found a new City of the Immaculate in Asia and left with four brothers for Nagasaki. When the atomic bomb exploded in 1945, the convent remained standing. The community grew, but Maximilian had to return to Poland. In 1939 the Germans invaded the country. Arriving at the convent, they destroy everything, taking the brothers and deporting them to a concentration camp. In May 1941, Maximiliano arrived at the camp Auschwitz, just after their arrival something impressive happened: a prisoner had escaped and they decided to punish him severely, so they took ten prisoners at random with the purpose of letting them starve in a bunker; Among the chosen ones was a father of a family, who, when selected, shouted: “My God! My poor wife, my poor children”Hearing this, Father Kolbe came forward saying: “I am a Catholic priest, I am old, I want to take his place”. Given this, the commander had no choice but to agree and put Father Kolbe in a cell. A Polish interpreter from the camp testifies that: “People shouted in the bunker, but as soon as Father Maximiliano Kolbe entered they began to pray, sing and recite the rosary together; he encouraged his brothers by spreading hope until the end”. Little by little they all died, one after another, after three weeks there were only four prisoners left, so a nurse was sent to finish them off. Thus, Maximilian he died with a peaceful face on the afternoon of August 14, 1941, when the feast of the Assumption was just beginning.
Maximilian Kolbe was proclaimed a saint by John Paul II on October 10, 1982 and his party It is celebrated on August 14. In fact, this man of God was recognized as a confessor and martyr of faith and appointed patron saint of journalists
Prayers of Maximilian Kolbe
Here are two beautiful prayers of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, especially his famous prayer of consecration to the Immaculate Conception. If you wish to deposit your personal intentions to Saint Maximilian Kolbe, offers you a beautiful novena, which you can pray in preparation for his feast on August 14.
Prayer of Consecration to the Immaculate Conception
“Oh Immaculate, Queen of heaven and earth, refuge of sinners and our most loving Mother, to whom God wanted to entrust the entire economy of mercy: I, unworthy sinner, prostrate myself at your feet humbly begging you to accept my whole being. as your thing and property, and do what you want of all the faculties of my soul and my body, of all my life, death and eternity.
Dispose, if you want, of all my being without any reservation, so that what was said about you is fulfilled: “She will crush your head”, as well as: “You alone have destroyed all the heresies in the whole world”, to so that in your immaculate and most merciful hands I become a useful instrument to introduce and increase your glory in so many lost and indifferent souls and thus spread as much as possible the blessed kingdom of the Most Holy Heart of Jesus.
Grant me to praise you, O Most Holy Virgin. Give me strength against your enemies.”
Prayer to the Immaculate Virgin
“O Immaculate Virgin, chosen among all women to give the world the Savior;
You, who were the faithful servant of the Lord, make us respond to Jesus’ call and follow him along the path of life that leads to the Father.
Virgin surrendered completely to God, take us out of sin, transform our hearts.
Queen of Apostles, make us workers of the Kingdom,
May our lives bear witness to the Gospel in the midst of our world that is searching for light, truth and love.
Share with us the desire of your maternal heart and your lively hope: that none of your children be lost.
O Mother of Jesus, tenderness of the Holy Spirit, may the whole creation celebrate with you the praise of the infinite mercy and love of God.”
-Prayer translated from French by
Quotes from Maximilian Kolbe
Father Maximilian Kolbe was very devoted to the virgin mary since his childhood. In fact, he preached a lot about the Immaculata and gave beautiful meditations to make the I pray of rosary beads. Here we present several quotes his words about the Virgin Mary and her Son Jesus.
“Mary offered the Son, therefore, she is the Virgin of the total offering and the giving of herself. She is the perfect property of Jesus, Jesus is God and He himself is the property of the Eternal Father.” (Translated from French by )
“The Immaculate, that is our ideal! Approach Her and resemble Her. Let her dominate our heart and our whole being, let her live and work in us and for us and let her herself love God with our heart, to belong totally to her without conditions. That is our ideal!” (Extract from Immaculate by Emma Haynes, SHM)
“Abandon yourself each day in the hands of Jesus and of the Immaculate. Do not grieve for the
setbacks and difficulties; leave everything to the Immaculate, she can do everything: she will do what
what you want” (Excerpt from Saint Maximilian and the Act of offering to Mary).
“I myself am afraid of suffering and humiliation, but it reassures me to think that not even Jesus, in the Garden of Olives, experienced a different feeling. Graces come when we need them!” (Translated from French by )
“If the Immaculate were not the Mediatrix of all graces, there would be no reason to conquer the whole world and each soul in particular in order to take them to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate, because the souls could then gain Paradise otherwise. way.” (Excerpt from The Immaculata reveals the Holy Spirit2006).
Maximilian Kolbe had a special attachment for Lourdeshe himself had been healed on his finger as a child, by using a little Lourdes water, therefore he decided to become his messenger: “In Lourdes, the Immaculate Conception took the pearls of her rosary and encouraged Bernadrdita to pray it with her. If we want to grow in love for Jesus, we must meditate the mysteries of the Rosary with Mary, repeating the Hail Mary over and over again and whispering it non stop.”
to know better the history of Maximilian Kolbe, there is a Biography by Félix Ochayta Piñero that traces the exceptional events that marked the life of this priest, journalist and martyr (1894-1941). This book is entitled: Maximilian Kolbe: martyr of charity.