Today the Church celebrates the virtuous life and heroic death of St. Maximilian Kolbe. A Polish Fransciscan priest with two PhD's and a strong devotion to the Blessed Mother. He died in Auschwitz in 1941 when he volunteered to be starved to death in place of an inmate who had a wife and children. He was placed in a "death cell" with a group of other inmates and was given no food or water. He led the group in prayers and hymns until he was the only prisoner still standing. When the death cell was needed for new inmates, a guard injected him with carbolic acid to kill him.
He was canonized by Blessed John Paul 2 in 1982.
Franciszek Gajowniczek who was saved by this priest's heroic sacrifice of love was at the beatification and spent the last 50 years of his life telling of the virtue and goodness of Fr. Maximilian Kolbe.
St. Maximilian Kolbe, pray for us that we could learn to love God and others more than our own lives.
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