Excerpts selected and translated by Dr. Wojciech Kosek.
This translation was published here on 5 July 2022.
To see the original Polish text← click, please!
(pp. 17–18) Father Kolbe took diligent care to keep himself united to God through the Immaculate. He persisted in sanctifying grace – he used to say: ‘I fear not death, but sin’ […] and tried to grow more and more in love and pray better and better. In his apostolate he always gave place to God, His grace, hence his works flourished and bore fruit, although he was often forced to use poor means. ‘The figure of the Servant of God and his apostolate,’ Bishop Władysław Miziołek wrote in 1971, ‘are a warning against the excessive and fashionable today sociologization of priestly life, with the forgetting of its most essential components, which are vocation, sanctification and participation in the mission of Christ.’
(p. 33) A month and a half before his ordination to the priesthood, he wrote: ‘Love of the Lord Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament (Host) above everything. He is everything to us’ […] In his later priestly years, he reminded himself during retreats that ‘the Eucharist is the power of the soul.’
(pp. 33–34) Receive the Lord Jesus in Holy Communion and everything from His hands with the humble disposition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the Annunciation: ‘Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.’
(p. 34) […] according to the account of sister Szczęsna Sulatycka, a nun from the Congregation of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who encountered father Kolbe in December 1926 in Zakopane: ‘At my first meeting with father Maximilian,’ she testifies, ‘I was struck above all by his faith. I entered the chapel […] The Holy Mass had already begun, and I was quite distracted. However, I was soon struck by how this priest, unknown to me, celebrated the Holy Mass, forcing me to pray. I thought that this must be a holy priest. After the Holy Mass, I was present at his thanksgiving: he did it with concentration and for a long time. […]’
(p. 36) He used to prepare for the Holy Mass […] with great care, and he celebrated the Mass itself […] with the greatest possible concentration, all preoccupied with the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice. He would do the thanksgiving after the Holy Mass for at least 20 minutes, and he was completely immersed in prayer during that time.
(p. 42) St. Maximilian’s reverence for the Eucharist especially turned out in the practice of adoration of the Eucharistic Jesus, which he took over from his parents, nurtured until the end of his life, and popularized in his environment. He is undoubtedly among the most ardent adorers of the Blessed Sacrament known to Church history. He was drawn to the altar by love. He knew that the Sacrament of Love could only be honored worthily with love.
(p. 45) In the novitiate, in the year 1910/1911, as father Anselm Kubit writes, he even more ‘understood and digested this truth that he lives for God, for His glory, and that he has to honor Him first with his own life, and that his work must begin with this. So he devoted himself wholeheartedly to it. His prayers were fervent, especially after Holy Communion, because the practice of daily Communion began at that time. How heartfelt and fresh his thanksgivings were. He knelt, not leaning on a kneeler, with his eyes closed, his face radiating joy and supernatural serenity.’
(p. 59) ‘Love the Immaculate with all your heart,’ he wrote in 1937 to one of the religious brothers, ‘often turn to Her with ejaculatory prayers, even if only with thought, and She will teach you to repay the Lord Jesus with boundless love for His love shown on the Cross and in the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar.’
Two religious from Niepokalanów write clearly, and all of them believe in it: […] ‘The Immaculate, as a true Mother, taught her perfect Knight true adoration of the King of Love and […] initiated him into a heartfelt union with Jesus.’
(pp. 61–63) […] the founder of MI was taken over by the fact that the Eucharistic Jesus gave Himself as food. With a heart full of gratitude, he used to say to Jesus: ‘You are coming to me and uniting Yourself with me closely – for under the form of food… Even now, Your Blood flows in my blood, Your soul, O God Incarnate, permeates my soul, strengthens it, and nourishes it… O miracles! Who would dare to suppose…’
(p. 63) What grace is given to people and what dignity they have that they can attend the Holy Mass and receive Holy Communion! ‘Holy Communion is available to all without exception. The period when the Lord Jesus remains in us under the sacramental species is the dearest time of the day. […] The soul is then a living tabernacle; little to say ‘tabernacle’ – it is something more. Then the soul of the Lord Jesus unites with our soul and becomes the soul of our soul. We cannot comprehend this; we can only feel the effects. A tremendously important prayer is participating in the Holy Mass and adoring the Blessed Sacrament.’
(pp. 63–64) Of great importance for the efficacy of the Eucharist is a good intention, as well as the immediate preparation for the Holy Mass and Holy Communion and thanksgiving afterward, which one can and must anticipate and prolong during the day, especially by fulfilling one’s duties well and taking care to bring joy to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, under the maternal eye of the Immaculate.
(p. 65) ‘When friendship in life finds indifference in response – it hurts! If worldly people, despised by those they loved, go so far as to take their own lives, unable to bear the pain they have suffered, there is a similar great pain for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, whose love has been despised.’ Thus the loving souls ‘seek to make amends for other souls who repay God’s Heart with ingratitude for boundless love […] The Lord God grants Himself to the soul more and more for these acts of reparation. The soul feels these graces and repays for this to the Lord God even more fervently with love for love’.
(p. 71) On the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception – the feast ‘in a more special way’ of the Knight of the Immaculate – its Founder used to make with members of the movement an examination of conscience of the year that was ending and stimulate himself to serve more zealously under the Immaculate’s banner.
He asked: ‘Have we become even closer to the Immaculate One through this year? Has our love for Her increased? Have we become closer to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate? Do we remain more closely with Jesus in the tabernacle and even more so after receiving Him in Holy Communion? Does His love on the cross attract us and impel us to reciprocate with sacrificial love, at our expense, suffering for Him?’ […] He urged that, especially on this day, we wash our souls in the Sacrament of Penance and enter Holy Communion with great zeal. ‘After Holy Communion, we will again ask the Immaculate One that She herself deigns to receive the Lord Jesus in our souls and give Him the pleasure He has never yet experienced. May she reward Jesus for our infidelities and the sins of the whole world and stir us to greater love.
(p. 76) ‘To carry out the Militia Immaculate’s goal, and to do so as soon as possible, i.e., to win the whole world and every soul individually, which is or will be until the world’s end, for the Immaculate One, and through Her for the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Moreover, make sure that no one removes the banner of the Immaculate from any soul, but rather constantly deepen the love for the Immaculate in souls […] so that She herself lives and loves (works) in them and through them […] Then souls will love the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus as they have never loved before because they will delve like She into the mysteries of love: the Cross, the Eucharist – as they have not delved before. God’s love will ignite the world through Her and burn it, and there will be an ‘ascension’ of souls and love […] a divinization of the whole world in Her and through Her.’