Day 27:
Opening Prayer
Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth Your Spirit, and they shall be created and You shall renew the face of the earth. O God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit, did instruct the hearts of the faithful, Grant that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever enjoy His consolations.
Through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Collaborating in Her Maternal Mission
This interior manner has given an equally Marian character to his work and the initiatives undertaken. Maximilian is well known as the initiator of newspapers and magazines, founder of the City-friary of Niepokalanów (City of the Immaculata) in Poland and Japan, but we should emphasise the Marian manner that animated and characterised these apostolic achievements, particularly highlighting three aspects:
- Passion for others
- Dialogue
- The gift of self
- Maximilian, in responding to his missionary call, made a precise, decisive choice. In current terms we would say that he put man at the center of his missionary action, man created in the image and likeness of God, man with his thirst for happiness, truth and love; he wanted to reach people in a hurry, where they were, to introduce the Immaculata in the heart of every person, so that conquered by her for Christ, they would discover their own high dignity as children of God and feel themselves directly involved in the same mission: to win every person for God through the Immaculata. To realize this plan as quickly as possible Kolbe employed the press, started to use the radio and wanted to use cinema, theater... any lawful means!
In the 1930s, when Father Kolbe decided to travel to Japan in response to the exhortation of Pope Pius XI and of his Minister General, Fr. Alfonso Orlini, who called for the evangelization of the world, Catholic missions were linked to a well-defined territory and organized into specific structures: parishes, prefectures and dioceses, normally assigned to a single religious institution, which generally undertook the building of churches, schools and hospitals.
Kolbe approached his missionary working thinking “outside of the box,” outside of the classical patterns of his time. Establishing the new Japanese mission, in a land where Catholics were a minority, Maximilian considered the whole nation as a mission territory. He chose to invest his energies in evangelization and formation of consciences, in the commitment to enlighten minds with the splendor of Truth and to inflame hearts with the fire of the Gospel, following the example and with the mediation and guidance of the Immaculate Mother of God and Mediatrix of grace.
This is why, with the help of translators (not only Catholics but also Protestants, Buddhists, Shinto) he devoted himself to publishing a newspaper in Japanese, The Knight of the Immaculata, which in December 1930 reached the print run of 25,000 copies. His made the difficult and courageous choice to privilege the spiritual works of mercy, directed to man’s eternal salvation, a choice that would not allow him to easily measure his results, but that reflected Mary’s maternal manner.
In that context, in fact, Maximilian realised that the community of Mugenzai no Sono would be called to witness to the “Gospel of charity,” but also to offer to Japanese brothers and sisters the “charity of the Gospel” in an appropriate way, communicating Christian values, sharing with them the new Life and working for its growth, until they reached the full maturity of Christ.
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.
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