Sacrifice of Self: Memorial of St. Maximilian Kolbe

 

The memorials of two martyrs who died during WWII occur only five days apart:  Carmelite Edith Stein on 9 August and Franciscan Maximilian Kolbe on 14 August.  Both died in Auschwitz, Kolbe in 1941 and Stein in 1942.  Their sacrifices sanctified the world.

 

Kolbe, a Polish Conventual Franciscan was born on Jan 8, 1894.  His death at age 49 was the result of an heroic sacrifice rooted in a mystical experience.  One day after he had been scolded for childhood misbehavior, Mary appeared to him as he said his night prayers.  She held two crowns.  A red one represented the crown of martyrdom and a white one represented the crown of purity.  She asked if he were willing to accept either of them. He replied he would accept both. 

 

He entered the Franciscans despite chronically poor health due to TB. The disease did not slow him down. He went on to found a number of friaries, published a monthly magazine, and was sent to Japan in 1930.  He was called back to Poland as the first rumblings of WW II sounded in the background. 

 

He was arrested along with other Franciscans in 1941. Initially interred in Pawiak prison he was sent to Auschwitz soon after.  Three prisoners escaped Auschwitz in July.  The camp commanders, using the standard sociopathic logic characteristic of the Nazis randomly chose ten prisoners from a line-up.  They were to be put into “The Bunker,” an airless underground space where they would slowly die from starvation and dehydration. When chosen as one of the ten forty-two year-old Franciszek Gajowniczek cried out, “Oh my wife, my children. I shall never see them again.” 

 

Kolbe stepped from the line.  He negotiated a trade and took Gajowniczek’s place in the bunker. 

 

The ten men languished without food or water for two weeks.  One-by-one their voices disappeared  until only Kolbe's remained.  Because the executioners needed the bunker he was taken to sick bay where, in a primitive model for physician-assisted suicide he was injected with camphor.  He died quickly.

 

There is follow-up.  Kolbe was beatified in 1971 and canonized on 10 October 1982.  Franciszek Gajowniczek, the man for whom Kolbe sacrificed his life attended both ceremonies.  Gajowniczek survived five years in the camps, dying in 1995 when he was 94 years old, fifty-four years after Kolbe took his place in the bunker.  During a visit to the U.S. Gajowniczek’s translator explained, “He told me as long as he had breath in his lungs he would consider it his duty to tell people about the heroic act of love of St. Maximilian Kolbe.” 

 

We never know the hour or the day when we will be called to step up to save another, to help another, or even to die for another. Kolbe's life ended as the result of a sacrifice he could not have anticipated when he woke the morning he exchanged himself for Gajowniczek.  In the end he did receive both crowns that Mary offered him so many years earlier.

 

St. Maximilian Kolbe pray for us.

 

_____________________________________

I've had a longstanding devotion to St. Maximillian that became even more significant when I pronounced first vows as a Jesuit 25  years ago today.  Will celebrate two Masses on this memorial a bit later in the AM.  

 

The photo is a full moon hovering over Mt. Equinox in Vermont. 

 

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD
 

Taste and See: Homily for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

1 Kgs 19:4-8

Ps 34

Eph 4:30-5:2

Jn 6:41-51

 

“Taste and see, the goodness of the Lord.”

 

The psalm response begins with two imperative verbs. The subject of an imperative verb isn’t stated but is understood to be you. 

 

You taste.

You see.

You taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

 

Taste is a multivalent word.  In medicine it means one of the five senses

subserved by a complicated neural pathway.  In everyday life it means, among other things, not wearing plaid, stripes, and polka dots together unless one is a fashion designer.  Taste can also mean to sample or experience something such as a taste of one’s own medicine or a taste of ice-cream.  To taste can also mean to absorb nourishment.  The Bible also applies taste to the discernment of moral values, the savoring of the knowledge of God, and the delights of our lives here on earth and in heaven.  This last is the obvious meaning of the psalm response.

 

 

Elijah is an important figure in scripture.  Indeed, we just celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration on Tuesday in which the apostles saw Jesus standing with Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets. Elijah had tasted the delights of the Lord. He had discerned the moral laws of the Lord. He was fearless in his prophecy to those who had fallen from the worship of the true God. 

 

Elijah was about as low as he could go in today’s reading from Kings. He had fled the wrath of Jezebel, prayed for death, and then fell asleep.  He had given up hope and had lost faith.  He was despondent.  He tasted the food only after the angel commanded him to do so and then set off on a journey of 40 days. 

The Jewish Study Bible notes that  an unburdened man could walk between

15 to 25 miles a day.  Thus, in 40 days Elijah covered between 600 and 1000 miles on foot. To put things into context, it is about a 700 mile walk from Boston to Charlotte, NC.

 

What went through Elijah’s mind during that difficult 40-day journey? What goes through our minds during the 40-day journeys we are forced to take during life? 

The journey of chemotherapy.  The journey of chronic pain.  The journey triggered by the loss of a loved one.  And the journey through the diminishment of old age.Are we able to taste and see the goodness of the Lord

in the same way as Elijah?

 

 

We are reminded In today’s Gospel that Jesus was—and remains—misunderstood by those who believed as well as by those who did not believe. We recently heard Matthew’s Gospel in which the crowd asked, “Where did this man get such wisdom and might deeds? Is he not the carpenter’s son?  Is not his mother named Mary?”  The late Jesuit Father  Dan Harrington named this ‘the prejudice of familiarity.’ Today we once again hear the prejudice of familiarity.

But we also hear the “prejudice of theology” and “the bias of philosophy”

 

In some ways the crowd’s disbelief makes sense.  How can Jesus, an ordinary guy in their experience, son of Joseph and Mary, make the claim, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”?  If nothing else their theology prevented them

from accepting such a claim.  In his commentary on this passage Jesuit Father Stanley Marrow wrote:

 

“In expressing their reaction, the Jews who murmured at him illustrate the absurdity of all those who put their trust in philosophical argument and theological reasoning to compel belief in Jesus Christ. For, when all is said and done, there is no argument that cannot be overturned by counterargument, and no theological reasoning that cannot be reduced to absurdity.”

 

Father Marrow continues, “The only way to accept Jesus’ claim is faith. Every other way being ultimately a rejection.  You either believe he came down from heaven or you do not. Knowing his father and mother has nothing to do with

accepting the revelation or rejecting it”

 

Taste and see, the goodness of the Lord.

 

Toward the end of the Gospel,  Jesus begins a statement with Amen, amen,

a signal that what He is about to say is important.  And it is: “whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world.”

 

In a few minutes you will hear the words:

 

“Take this all of you and eat of it, for this is my body which will be given up for you.”  Thus Jesus tells us that he is truly and substantially present in the bread and wine.  And shortly after those words are pronounced we will indeed taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

 

____________________________________________________ 

the photos are from several years ago.  They were taken at St. Joseph Trappist Abbey in Spencer.  I got there routinely, about once a month.  It is about an 80 minute drive from BC to Spencer.  That is under the best of conditions and avoiding the Mass Pike.  

All the photos are of glass.  I made my final vow retreat at Spencer

The lamp on the door of the cottage within the enclosure where I stayed.  Great glass.

I was told this window was made of discarded bottles.  It is quite large.  Great light and even greater privacy.

One of three small windows in a door.  The nice thing ab out photography is the ability to focus on a very small detail and get a closer look at it.

The bottle window.  It is quite large and fascinating. 

Going on retreat in six days.  There will be no homily until after 26 August.  

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD

The Stuff of Life: Homily for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Ex 16:2-4, 12-15

Ps 78:3-4, 23-24 25, 54

Jn 6:24-35

 

It is no accident that the first reading from Exodus is paired with the Gospel narrative from John.  They are connected through the words of one of the most beautiful hymns of the Catholic Church.

 

In his Dictionary of Biblical Theology Jesuit Xavier Leon-Dufour writes about bread as follows:

 

"Bread, a gift of God, is for man the source of strength, a means of subsisting so essential that a lack of bread is a lack of everything. . . . In the Our Father bread

seems to sum up all the gifts that are necessary for us."

 

The idea of bread as essential, bread as a symbol of all that is necessary has carried forward into American English, or at least American slang.  In the past, when a guy would say, "I need some serious bread by tomorrow" he was generally not referring to slices of high fiber whole wheat. He needed money.  Lots of it.

 

Bread is referred to as the staff of life.  Bread is among the most necessary of foods, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, and among the most satisfying of things to bake. The Gospel narrative refers to the multiplication of loaves and fish

that was related earlier in this sixth chapter of John.

 

The people were seeking Jesus, but they were doing so for the wrong reasons

because they misunderstood Him, His mission, and the miracle he performed. As Jesus noted, they were seeking him because he had fed them.  They weren't seeking him because of His message of the Kingdom of God. They wanted to find Jesus because they were satisfied by the food and perhaps wanted more

to nosh on during the trip home.  No one can truly know?

 

The crowed responded only to the superficial without attention

to Jesus’ message and meaning.  The same was true in the first reading.

God’s response to the defiant challenge of the people was  "So that you may know that I, the Lord, am your God"  The unspoken implication was “I will give you all that you  need.”

 

We just heard the people’s impertinent demand that referred back to the first reading. "What sign can you do that we may believe in you?  Our ancestors ate manna.  He (meaning Moses) gave them bread from heaven to eat."

 

Jesus responded,  "It was not Moses who gave bread from heaven. . . The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."  In response to their further plea to "give us this bread always: Jesus made an important theological statement that we must always remember. “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

 

This does not mean that we won't have to go to Stop 'n Shop at annoyingly frequent intervals for bread and other necessities.  And it doesn’t mean we won't have to go to the well daily.  Jesus is telling us that He is the true manna, the true bread from heaven, sent by the Father to nourish us always with His Real Presence in the sacrament of communion. 

 

The ancient hymn that  connects the first reading and the Gospel is Panis Angelicus which means Bread of Angels. I chose it for my first Mass

the day after ordination, and again at the Mass of thanksgiving  in my hometown the following week. When Pope Benedict visited Washington, D.C. I attended the Papal Mass in the baseball stadium.  Just as I was returning to my seat

after distributing communion, the orchestra played the intro to Panis Angelicus. And then the voice rang out:  Placido Domingo. Having always preferred Domingo to Pavarotti, had I been found dead in my seat afterwards

it would have been with a smile on my face. An interesting note is that Pope Benedict stepped down from his chair to greet Domingo, something he didn’t do for anyone else.  You can find the clip on YouTube.

 

There are many English translations of the Latin lyrics. All are meant to convey the message of the lyricist: St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

"The bread of the angels

became the bread of man;

the bread of heaven

was given visible form.

O wonder of wonders,

The Body of Christ

nourishes the poorest

and most humble of people."

 

In just a few minutes,  you will hear the words of consecration.  Listen carefully.

Let the words sink into your soul and remain there for the rest of this day.

 

May they dwell there for the rest of your lives. 

 

__________________________________________

I'd been looking for this set of photos for a very long time.  By set I mean the several hundred I took in Ljubljana in 2018.  They were on an old USB drive from which I hadn't transferred photos to a solid state drive.  I was ecstatic when I found them.  

 

 

This is not in an Orthodox church but is in . . . .

 

. . . this pizza place known as Pop's Pizza, begun by Greg Yurkovich whom I met on an earlier visit after he started Pop's Place (burgers). 

Another of Pop's Pizza.  Had several pizzas there.  Excellent. 

Standing out in front of the place with Greg and an American buddy.  They were talking I was simply looking and captured this woman walking down one of my favorite alleys.

A nearby fountain.

Will be on retreat from 16 August to 26 August.    There will be no posts during that time. 

 

Fr. Jack, SJ, MD