Maximilian Kolbe and the Love That Steps Forward

In the summer of 1941, a prisoner escaped from Auschwitz. The SS guards selected ten men to die by starvation as punishment. When Franciszek Gajowniczek was chosen and cried out for his wife and children, a small Polish priest stepped from the ranks. Father Maximilian Kolbe, prisoner 16670, volunteered to take his place.

Gajowniczek had done nothing to earn this sacrifice. He and Kolbe were not friends. They had no prior arrangement, no mutual obligation. Kolbe simply saw a man condemned and chose to stand where that man stood. For two weeks, Kolbe led the other condemned men in prayer and hymns in the starvation bunker until the guards finally ended his life with a lethal injection on August 14, 1941.

Gajowniczek survived the war. He lived until 1995, and for the rest of his life he carried the weight and wonder of what had happened — a stranger had died so he could live.

Paul writes in Romans 5 that very rarely will someone die even for a good person. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: while we were still sinners — not friends of God, not seekers, not people who had earned a single thing — Christ died for us. Kolbe's sacrifice moved one man to a lifetime of gratitude. How much more should the sacrifice of the Son of the Almighty reshape everything about how we live, and how we love?