With Mary on a Mission: St. Maximilian Kolbe’s Missionary Way

“Everywhere Is Love!”

“Scrutinizing with ecstatic admiration the divine plan of salvation, whose origin is the Father who freely willed to communicate to creatures the divine life of Jesus Christ revealed wondrously in Mary Immaculate, Father Kolbe, fascinated and enraptured, exclaims: ‘Everywhere is love’ (KW 1291). The gratuitous love of God is the answer to all doubts. ‘God is love,’ says St. John (1Jn 4:8).”

These words, pronounced by Pope St. John Paul II during his homily of December 8, 1982, at Santa Maria Maggiore, two months after the canonization of Father Kolbe, hold the key to understanding mission in the perspective embraced and lived by St. Maximilian.

Mission, in fact, it is all about love: the “excessive” love of God the Father who dreams of the happiness of every creature and gives His Son for us (cf. Jn 3:16). It is about the “excessive” love of Christ, who became man for us in Mary’s womb, let His Heart be pierced on the Cross to quench our dry and hard hearts with the living Water of His Spirit, with His Body broken and His Blood poured forth for us (Jn 19:17-37). It is about the humble love of the young woman of Nazareth, who offered her womb and heart to God in the abandonment of faith, so that in time and in history He could realize this plan of salvation and love (cf. Lk 1:26-38).

With the depth of the mystics and saints, Maximilian, follower of St. Francis, understood that the infinite love of the Triune God for humanity was fully revealed through Jesus Christ. In the mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross, God humbled Himself, became poverty, weakness, flesh. The Lord Jesus stripped/emptied Himself of everything and surrendered to our hands (cf. Phil 2:6-7): He is totally-given Love. “Therefore, when Christ came into the world, He said: Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, Here I am—it is written about me in the scroll—I have come to do your will, my God” (cf. Heb 10:5-7).

St. Maximilian, however, did not forget that the mystery of this “emptying” took place in the womb of Mary, as St. Paul reminds us: “When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4). For a special gift of grace, we could say for a unique “charism,” Maximilian was allowed to grasp and accept with great clarity the mystery and mission of Mary in God’s plan.

Closing Prayer

Hail Mary… 

O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you, and for all those who do not have recourse to you, especially the enemies of Holy Church and all those recommended to you.

Go to previous prayer |  Go to next prayer | Go to the beginning