A heroic saint for modern times

This day in 1941 saw the death of a great Catholic saint: like Edith Stein and Titus Brandsma, the Carmelite saints who had both perished a year earlier, he died in a Concentration Camp, but he was a Franciscan: St Maximilian Kolbe OFMConv, whose feast day is today. I have venerated him ever since I first heard about him. The special manner of his death in Auschwitz in the place of another prisoner is legendary. Before that he crammed an impressive range of activities into his short life (he died aged 47). He founded Militia Immaculatae ('Soldiers of the Immaculate One), a movement to encourage individual Catholics to pray for conversions by intercession to Our Lady. He founded a monastery in Japan which survived the atomic bomb dropped nearby in Nagasaki. One of his greatest gifts however was in the field of communication, for he saw the importance of the new invention of radio and founded a radio station as well as using the medium of the newspaper. I am sure that if he were alive today he would be keenly involved in the exploitation of the potential of the internet. We Carmelites need to imitate him in this, for there are so many openings to address our fellows through this media today.