February 4

FRATERNITY is putting another life ahead of your own

There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.  ~  John 15:13

As a child, Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941) had a deep devotion to Our Lady.  On one occasion he had a vision in which Mary offered him either a white garment, symbolizing purity, or a red one, symbolizing martyrdom.  “I choose both,” the boy replied.

Following the German conquest of Poland in 1939, he was arrested, but soon released.  Fr. Kolbe devoted himself to helping Jewish refugees; when the Nazis discovered this, he was again arrested and sent to the death camp Auschwitz in 1941.  There he tried to set an example of faith and hope for the other prisoners.  When a prisoner escaped from camp, the Germans chose ten men at random and sentenced them to death by starvation; one of them was a Polish sergeant, Franciszek Gajowniczek.  Fr. Kolbe left his place in the ranks and asked permission from the commandant to take Gajowniczek’s place.  The shocked German officer agreed, and Kolbe and nine others were taken away to die. Maximilian helped the others prepare for death; he was the last to succumb, dying on the  eve of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1941. 
~ J.M. Guerin

 Fr. Kolbe teaches us that sometimes being a Knight requires us to work against an evil system, even to the point of disobeying immoral or unjust laws.  Do any circumstances exist today where Knights may have to emulate Fr. Kolbe?

 The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
~ William Blake
 

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