What miracles! ...

Bring joy to your servant, for to you, O Lord, 
I lift up my soul. - Psalm 86:4

 

"You come to me and unite Yourself 

intimately to me 

under the form of nourishment. 

Your Blood now runs in mine,

Your Soul, Incarnate God,

compenetrates mine, giving courage and support.

What miracles! 

Who would have ever imagined such!

St Maximilian Kolbe

Poland ~1894-1941

Priest, Martyr

Founder:  Militia of Immaculata
Patron: drug addicts, imprisoned people,
journalists, Pro-life movement

Feast Day - August 14

“When the conquest for the Immaculate of the whole world and of every single soul now living or to live until the end of the world, and through Her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus is completed, ... then souls will love the Sacred Heart as they have never as yet loved Him, because like Her they will have been immersed as never before in the mystery of love: the Cross, the Eucharist. Through Her the love of God will inflame the world, will set it on fire, and will effect the ‘assumption’ of souls,... the divinization of the entire world.” 

- St. Maximilian Kolbe
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"A single act of love makes the soul return to life." -  St. Maximilian Kolbe
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"But grace, for ourselves and for others, is obtained by humble prayer,
by mortification, and by fidelity in the accomplishment of our 
own ordinary duties, including the simplest ones." - St. Maximilian Kolbe

Click here: St Maximilian Kolbe - YouTube (8 mins)

St Maximilian, pray for us!

 More on St Maximilian (From Saint of the Day - www.americancatholic.org)

I don’t know what’s going to become of you!” How many parents have said that? Maximilian Mary Kolbe’s reaction was, “I prayed very hard to Our Lady to tell me what would happen to me. She appeared, holding in her hands two crowns, one white, one red. She asked if I would like to have them—one was for purity, the other for martyrdom. I said, ‘I choose both.’ She smiled and disappeared.” After that he was not the same.

He entered the minor seminary of the Conventual Franciscans in Lvív (then Poland, now Ukraine), near his birthplace, and at 16 became a novice. Though he later achieved doctorates in philosophy and theology, he was deeply interested in science, even drawing plans for rocket ships.

Ordained at 24, he saw religious indifference as the deadliest poison of the day. His mission was to combat it. He had already founded the Militia of the Immaculata, whose aim was to fight evil with the witness of the good life, prayer, work and suffering. He dreamed of and then founded Knight of the Immaculata, a  religious magazine under Mary’s protection to preach the Good News to all nations. For the work of publication he established a “City of the Immaculata”—Niepokalanow—which housed 700 of his Franciscan brothers. He later founded one in Nagasaki, Japan. Both the Militia and the magazine ultimately reached the one-million mark in members and  subscribers. His love of God was daily filtered through devotion to Mary.

In 1939 the Nazi panzers overran Poland with deadly speed. Niepokalanow was severely bombed. Kolbe and his friars were arrested, then released in less than three months, on the feast of the Immaculate Conception.

In 1941 he was arrested again. The Nazis’ purpose was to liquidate the select ones, the leaders. The end came quickly, in Auschwitz three months later, after terrible beatings and humiliations. A prisoner had escaped. The commandant announced that 10 men would die. He relished walking along the ranks. “This one. That one.” As they were being marched away to the starvation bunkers, Number 16670 dared to step from the line. “I would like to take that man’s place. He has a wife and children.” “Who are you?” “A priest.” No name, no mention of fame. Silence.

The commandant, dumbfounded, perhaps with a fleeting thought of history, kicked Sergeant Francis Gajowniczek out of line and ordered Father Kolbe to go with the nine. In the “block of death” they were ordered to strip naked and the slow starvation began in darkness. But there was no screaming—the prisoners sang. By the eve of the Assumption four were left alive. The jailer came to finish Kolbe off as he sat in a corner praying. He lifted his fleshless arm to receive the bite of the  hypodermic needle. It was filled with carbolic acid. They burned his body with all the others. He was beatified in 1971 and canonized in 1982.

From glory to glory...

“So death will come to fetch you? - No, not death, but God Himself.  

Death is not the horrible specter we see represented in pictures.  

The catechism teaches that death is the separation of the soul 
from the body; that is all.  I am not afraid of a separation 

which will unite me forever with God.” - St Therese of Lisieux

 

"The Pope and the faithful had gathered in the catacombs in  the evening of August 6, 258.  Being Christians in a cemetery, theirs was an illegal assembly punishable by death.  There is every reason to believe that the catacomb Mass that evening was to be offered specifically to strengthen the faithful to endure the new persecution... Pope Sixtus was preaching... soldiers burst into the crypt.  The congregation drew together before them, baring their breasts and extending their necks to signify that they were ready to die to protect the Pope.  But Sixtus would have none of that.  He came forward and they took him, along with four of his deacons.

    Another deacon, Lawrence, cried out:  "Father, where are you going without your deacon?"  Sixtus replied:  "I do not leave you, my son.  You shall follow me in three days."

    The Vicar of Christ was taken up the nearby stairs and beheaded on the spot, along with the four deacons.  For some 1,500 years his name was mentioned in the Canon said by every Catholic priest of the Latin rite, anywhere in the world.

    Deacon Lawrence was temporarily spared in order to give the persecution officials access to the treasure supposedly accumulated by the Roman church.  What he actually brought forth before the prefect of Rome was not gold and silver, but a representative group of the poor and needy. ...The angry prefect commanded that Lawrence be roasted to death on a gridiron.  He joked with his executioners about turning his body over because 'one side is broiled enough'." 

From The Founding of Christendom, Vol I - Warren Carroll

This series a MUST READ! Excellent, excellent!

St Lawrence

Deacon, Martyr - d. 258
Considered third patron of Rome
(after St Peter and St Paul)

Feast Day - August 10

Among the Christian martyrs of ... The early Roman days ...

Was good St. Lawrence, who was famed ... For his unselfish ways ...

He loved the humble and the poor ... And helped them all he could ...

And in those persecution days ... In their defense he stood ...

The Romans had the notion that  ... The Church was rich in treasures ...

And they demanded all its wealth ... With threats of dire measures ...

"Here are the riches of the Church" ... St Lawrence then replied ...

As he embraced the sick and lame ... And beggars at his side ...

And so they roasted him alive ... Above a fire slow ...

But on the martyr's face remained ... A happy, holy glow.

From Poem Portraits of the Saints, James J Metcalfe (1956)

Click here: St. Lawrence - YouTube
Painting above:  Martyrdom of St Lawrence ~ Pellegrino Tibaldi (1592) ~ Basilica, El Escorial 

St Lawrence, pray for us!