Memorial of Saint Maximilian
Kolbe, martyr
(Deuteronomy 10:12-22; Matthew 17:22-27)
St. Maximilian Kolbe was a
Franciscan friar working in Poland until he was arrested by the Gestapo. Committed to Auschwitz, Kolbe saw an
opportunity to show his love for God when another prisoner was being sent to
death for a crime that he did not commit.
Because the man had a family, Kolbe offered himself as a
substitute. Pope St. John Paul II
considered this act a genuine witness to the faith and canonized Maximillian
Kolbe as a martyr. In today’s first
reading Moses exhorts the people to likewise give witness to their love of
God. But he does not ask them to die for
God but to live for him.
The Israelites are about to enter the Promised Land. They have every reason to hope that they and
their children will have all the resources they will need to live in prosperity. But Moses, conveying the will of God, wants more
than that for them. He wants them to
fulfill their destiny of being a model of God’s justice. So he exhorts them to remember God’s
graciousness to them and to their ancestors.
He is especially concerned that they treat other peoples fairly for, he
says, “…you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt.”
As mass immigration has become a reality in all parts of the
world, we should highlight these words of Moses. It is difficult to sojourn in different lands
with different customs and a different language. Immigrants need understanding, fairness and
even compassion. Such treatment would
show our solidarity not just across national boundaries but among generations.
