St. Maximillian Kolbe Feast Day!

So as everyone knows I always talk about my "Fav 5 Saints" quite a bit and today is a wonderful day on the Church calendar.  It is one of there feast days.  St. Maximilian Kolbe Here Is To You!  It is an awesome testament of how Christ chooses the weak to lead the strong when he chose St. Maximilian Kolbe a frail priest from Poland to stand up against the Nazi Germany Movement and would later give his life for it. 

Here is some info on him so that you can have a better understanding of why he is AMAZING!  Maximilian was born in 1894 in Poland and became a Franciscan. He contracted tuberculosis and, though he recovered, he remained frail all his life. Before his ordination as a priest, Maximilian founded the Immaculata Movement devoted to Our Lady.  He spread the Movement through a magazine entitled "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 comparable monastery and then on to India where he furthered the Movement. In 1936, he returned home because of ill health. After the Nazi invasion in 1939, he was imprisoned and released for a time. But in 1941, he was arrested again and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz and branded as prisoner 16670. He was assigned to a special work group staffed by priests and supervised by especially vicious and abusive guards. His calm dedication to the faith brought him the worst jobs available, and more beatings than anyone else. At one point he was beaten, lashed, and left for dead. The prisoners managed to smuggle him into the camp hospital where he spent his recovery time hearing confessions. When he returned to the camp, Maximilian ministered to other prisoners, including conducting Mass and delivering communion using smuggled bread and wine.  On July 31, 1941, there was an escape from the camp. Camp protocol, designed to make the prisoners guard each other, required that ten men be slaughtered in retribution for each escaped prisoner. Francis Gajowniczek, a married man with young children was chosen to die for the escape. Maximilian volunteered to take his place, and died as he had always wished - in service.  He was killed by lethal injection after enduring 3 weeks of starvation and dehydration. He was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1982. His feast day is today August 14th.  

Favorite Quotes

"For Jesus Christ I Am Prepared To Suffer Still More"

"Greater Love Has No Man Than This, That He Would Lay Down His Life For His Friends"