Happy Feast of Saint Maximilian Kolbe!
The story of his martyrdom in Auschwitz’s concentration camp on August 14, 1941 is well known. Less known is that Kolbe was a missionary in Japan for much of the previous decade, living in Nagasaki and much loved by the growing Catholic population there. He carried out his profound apostolate of Marian devotion leading to greater intimacy with Jesus, along with his media apostolate, helping to establish the first Japanese Catholic newspaper.
During this time, Kolbe’s tuberculosis flared up seriously (after being in remission) and he was treated at the hospital of Nagasaki. Needing frequent X-rays, he became acquainted with the chief radiologist, a recent Catholic convert named Dr. Takashi Nagai… a relationship that later took on great and wondrous significance (see my recent post of August 9). Kolbe’s impact undoubtedly strengthened Nagasaki’s Catholic community for the enormous sacrifices they would be called to make when their district of Urakami became GROUND ZERO for the second nuclear bomb on August 9, 1945.
And, as we learn about Takashi Nagai’s mysterious “dream” and his prayer as he lay dying in a nuclear wasteland in the days following the bombing, we should ponder the possibility that Franciszek Gajowniczek (the Polish prisoner whose place Kolbe took in the starvation bunker) was not the only “father pleading for his children” that Saint Maximilian Kolbe rescued from death in the midst of the inhuman horrors of the most destructive war in history. Who knows how many others he aided, from the radiance of his fulfilled love dwelling in God and in the Communion of Saints?
