The Fullness of Life
Love the more excellent way (Part II)
The summit of self-giving love is the willingness to die for the life of another. Our Lord said, "There is no greater love than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). We see this act of heroic self-giving in the very life of our Lord Himself. What is astonishing, as St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans is that Christ died for us while we were yet sinners.
We witness such act of self giving in the lives of countless followers of Christ. Among these let us just recount the death of a Polish priest, Maximilian Kolbe, who offered his life for the life of a prisoner in the concentration camp of Auschwitz where several million persons were put to death.
The name Auschwitz will continue to go down in history as a name suggesting inhuman atrocity and a place of horror. It earned the name "death camp". Some called it "death factory". It has left a scar in the face of humanity, reminding man of his worst. But this is just one side of Auschwitz.
The other side of Auschwitz is that it became a crucible for the best of man. Here, persons were tried "like gold in a furnace" and among the many who had been cleansed and purified in this crucible, the person of Fr. Kolbe stood out.
It was in the month of August in 1941 when this event took place. Maximilian was among the prisoners in the camp of Auschwitz. One day a prisoner escaped from block 14 where Father Kolbe belonged. Terror gripped the rest of the prisoners. If the prisoner did not return the following day, ten other prisoners of his block would be put to a painful death in the "starvation dungeon"—a death from starvation and thirst.
The prisoner who escaped did not come back. The Commandant picked ten men who were to die. Among these men was Sergeant Gajownczek; a man with a wife and children. He cried, "My poor wife! My poor children!"
Hearing that cry, Father Kolbe moved out of his line and stood before the Commandant and said, "I ask to die in the place of that man."
Quite bewildered at the request, the Commandant paused for sometime and asked, "Why?"
"Because he has a wife and children and I am old and feeble."
"And who are you?" asked Commandant Fritsch.
"I am a Catholic priest," answered Maximilian. Such an answer left no room for Fritsch to refuse. Kolbe was condemned to death along with the nine. During his canonization, he was proclaimed a martyr of love as well as a martyr for the faith.