We are not alone

Studies have shown that children who know more facts and stories about their family histories tend to be more resilient in the face of adversity, have a stronger sense of self-control and self-esteem, and have a deeper sense that their families function well.

Why would knowing facts such as where your grandparents grew up, or where your parents went to high school, or some illness or terrible thing that had happened to someone in your family, have such an impact on a child?  Marshall Duke, the psychologist who conducted these studies, suggests that these children have a strong intergenerational self.  They know that they are not alone in the world, that they belong to something bigger than themselves.

This shouldn’t be too surprising to us as Catholics.  We have long nurtured our intergenerational selves by venerating the saints.  We read stories of the saints’ lives, we celebrate their feast days in our liturgies and pageants, and we name saints as patrons of churches, trades, illnesses and causes.  We claim particular saints as our personal patrons, perhaps associated with our names or birthdates.

But this is not an exercise in ancestor worship, for our connection with the saints goes much deeper.  We are in communion with the saints.  While they may seem dead to the foolish (Wis 3:2), they still live today one with God, just as we hope to someday live one with God.  They are our prayer partners in faith, our friends as well models of faith to inspire us.

By knowing the stories of the saints, who, with one exception, were sinners just like us, sinners who, at times, struggled in their faith, yet found the grace of God to overcome their struggles and be one with God, we find strength and resilience in the face of our own struggles and difficulties.  We find the love to give generously when we could easily keep whatever we had.  We find the courage to forgive when the world insists that we get even.  We find the power to hope in the goodness of God, despite the evil that can seem pervasive in our world.

Today, we honor and remember the edifying life – and most especially, the edifying death – of St. Maximilian Kolbe.  Born in 1894 in Poland, he joined the Conventual Franciscans as a teenager and was ordained a priest in 1918.  He was devoted to the Virgin Mary and led quite a productive priesthood, including six years as a missionary in Japan.  He founded many friaries.  In the face of local opposition, he had a friary built outside Nagasaki, Japan.  The locals insisted that he was building on the wrong side of the mountain, for they felt the spirits would be more propitious on the other side.  When the atom bomb fell some ten years later, the friary was sheltered from the blast and survives to this day. 

Maximilian was back in Poland when the Germans invaded in 1939, and he provided shelter for many refugees, including almost 2,000 Jews in his friary.  He was soon arrested by the Germans, and ultimately sent to Auschwitz in 1941. 

Later that year, after three prisoners disappeared from the prison, the Nazis declared that ten men would be chosen at random to starve to death in an underground bunker to deter future escape attempts.  When one of the selected prisoners – a Polish soldier named Franciszek Gajownicszek – cried out “My wife and my children!,” Fr. Kolbe immediately volunteered to take his place in the death chamber. 

Fr. Kolbe celebrated Mass in the death chamber, using crumbs of bread and wine that had been smuggled to him.  He sang Marian hymns each day, ministering to his fellow inmates as one died after another.  After two weeks, only Fr. Kolbe was still alive.  The guards killed him with an injection of carbolic acid.

Pope Paul VI beatified Maximilian Kolbe in 1971 and Pope John Paul II canonized him in 1982.  Mr. Gajownicszek was present at both the beatification and the canonization, dying in 1995 at the age of 94.   He considered it his duty to tell all the people he met about the heroic act of love by Maximilian Kolbe.

Indeed, we are not alone.  We belong to something much larger than us…and we are stronger for it.

St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us.