Monday, August 6, 2007

Father Saint Maximilian Kolbe's "Our War"

From “A Man For Others: Maximilian Kolbe Saint of Auschwitz In the Words of Those Who Knew Him” by Patricia Treece, published by Harper & Row Publishers, 1982 hardcover 1st edition, at page 73.

Though written in 1934 for his spiritual soldiers of the far flung Militia, an article entitled “Our War” sums up the message that consumed so much of Kolbe’s energy between 1936 and 1939.

In it he says:

Don’t set out to do your own works for God, however great these might be, but give yourself humbly into his hands to do his works.

Accept all that happens as his will, including the sufferings he permits (not causes) you to undergo at the hands of evil men, knowing that even these will mysteriously enrich you.

As embers of the spiritual army fighting under the generalship of Mary, give yourself to God through service to her. To be one in will with Mary of the great fiat, the only human being whose will has never deviated by her choice from God’s, is to be perfectly united to the will of God. And it is this alignment of your will with his that is the pressing business of your life.

Offering yourself totally to God, let him transform you into a knight of love who, with others, will conquer the whole world, not in the sense of capturing it, but of freeing it.

He ends this article by saying that when each Militia member is “set aflame with the fire of divine love (I repeat we are not talking here of sweet tears and feelings, but if the will) … melted (and) fused to God … we will melt the whole world and each individual in it with love.”

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