Dear St. Maximilian, I’m in Trouble...Please Help Me

Dawn Embraces One Of God's Saints

Please enjoy this excerpt from Sunday Will Never Be The Same: A Rock And Roll Journalist Opens Her Ears To God.

Maybe, in God’s plan, he permits people to ask saints for help. Why would he? I don’t know. And I don’t want to make a habit of it. But if good people are doing it and they say it gets results, I’ll try it just this once.

Patrick said St. Francis de Sales is the patron of journalists. But he didn’t tell me anything else about the saint, and I didn’t question him further for fear of opening up a door for him to try to convert me. So I’ll type “Francis de Sales” into Google and see if anything about his life comes up that would make me want to ask him for help…

Well, that’s disappointing. All I can find is that de Sales was a bishop in Switzerland who wrote pamphlets. Why would the Catholic Church make someone a patron of journalists who never worked at a newspaper?

Maybe I’ll have better luck if I put the words patron saint journalists into Google.

The first result is a page from an index of saints for every occasion. Two are listed as patrons of journalists: de Sales and Maximilian Kolbe. But Maximilian is also listed as a patron saint of pro-lifers! Now we’re getting somewhere!

I Google some more and find an online biography of St. Maximilian on a site called catholic-pages.com. It says his birthday is January 8—one day after Curt Boettcher’s, and the same day as David Bowie and Elvis Presley. I like him already.

The biography is a long read, but that’s all right; it’s not like I have anything else to do right now but worry.

It says St. Maximilian was a Franciscan friar in Poland during the first part of the twentieth century. But what does that have to do with journalism? Oh, I see... he ran a publishing operation out of his friary, including a daily newspaper that had a Sunday circulation of 225,000. Wow! When the Germans invaded, he opened up the friary to Polish refugees, including 2,000 Jews...

A saint who sheltered Jews. I can hardly believe it.

Tears are coming out. I pick up my purse from the floor and pull out a tissue—darn, it’s my last one—and wipe my face, glancing around to make sure no one sees.

A patron saint of journalists and pro-lifers who cared for Jews. Perhaps St. Maximilian will care for me too.

Back to the bio. It says the Nazis came for him after he published these words:

No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the hecatombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love. And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?

They sent him to Auschwitz. I am stunned. Had no idea any Catholics were sent there, let alone priests.

The bio tells about Father Kolbe’s selfless generosity to his fellow prisoners and how he retained his humanity even as he was singled out for beatings by a guard.

I am entranced as I read. St. Maximilian seems alive to me. He writes to his mother from the camp: “Do not worry about me or my health, for the good Lord is everywhere and holds every one of us in his great love.”

Now the article moves on to the “last act” in St. Maximilian’s life. I’d better steel myself.

This part of the story is told through first-person testimonies of eyewitnesses. I’ve never seen that in a saint’s biography before; usually it is just writings from some person who writes in flowery language about how holy the saint was. This is different. This is real.

After three prisoners escaped, the SS officers rounded up the prisoners in Kolbe’s cell block. The senior officer announced that, as punishment for the escape, they would select ten men whom they would send to an underground bunker to die of starvation.

One of the men who was picked was a former Polish soldier. When the guard called out his number and told him to come away, he cried out, “Oh, my poor wife, my poor children. I shall never see them again.”

Then Father Kolbe stepped out from the ranks and spoke to the head SS officer. He asked to change places with the distraught man. And, miraculously, the officer let him.

Tears again. I hastily open my cubicle’s top drawer and grab a couple of takeout napkins.

Even in the starvation cell, St. Maximilian encouraged the other prisoners, leading them in prayers and song. An eyewitness who assisted the janitor in the bunker says that when he heard them, he had the impression he was in a church.

Kolbe kept up the spirits of his fellow prisoners for two weeks, until he was the only one left. Finally the Nazis sent someone in to give him a shot of carbolic acid. Here again, remarkably, there is a quote from an eyewitness: “Fr. Kolbe, with a prayer on his lips, himself gave his arm to the executioner.”

What an amazing man. I have to read more about him. Putting his name into Google again, I find another biography of the saint on Kolbenet.com. It has a more vivid description of his final moments. At the bottom, it adds, “The man whose place Father Kolbe took was present for the beatification of Blessed Kolbe, a confessor, by Pope Paul VI on October 17, 1971. On October 10, 1982, Pope John Paul II canonized him Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe, a martyr.”

As I read those words, I can see Gajowniczek in St. Peter’s Square. I think about how he lived for decades after Kolbe saved his life. I imagine what it must have been like for him to witness the pope declare Kolbe one of the holy ones of God.

My heart explodes.

One more glance around; no one is looking. Another takeout napkin to my face.

Under my breath, I say, Dear St. Maximilian, I’m in trouble. I’m about to be fired. Please help me.

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