Today, August 14, is the memorial of Saint Maximilian Kolbe.
Maximilian was born in 1894 in Poland and became a Franciscan Conventual. He contracted tuberculosis and, though he recovered, he remained sickly all his life.
In 1906, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him in a vision. She offered him a white crown and a red crown and asked which he would accept. Understanding the white to represent a life of purity and the red to represent martyrdom, he said he would accept them both.
Before his priestly ordination, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to the Virgin Mary. After receiving a doctorate in Theology, he spread the Movement through the magazine “The Knight of the Immaculata” and helped form a community of 800 men, the largest in the world.
Maximilian went to Japan where he built a monastery and then on to India where he furthered the Movement. He was in Manila in May 1936, celebrated Mass on May 30 in the chapel of the then-Apostolic Nunciature (now the San Beda Abbey). That same year, he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. In 1941 he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz.
In 1941, in reprisal for one prisoner’s escape, 10 men were chosen to die. Maximilian offered himself in place of a young husband and father. He was the last to die, having endured two weeks of starvation, thirst, and neglect.
He was beatified by Pope St. Paul VI in 1971. He was canonized by Pope St. John Paul II in 1982.