COMMANDMENTS AND COUNSELS

SAINT MAXIMILIAN KOLBE, PRIEST, MARTYR

Ezek 16:59-63; Isa 12; Mt 19:3-12

Freedom to Accept or Reject

In our Christian vocation, some things are commanded, and others are given as counsel for those who can take on an extra burden for the love of God and their neighbours. Those things that are commanded are given in the Law of Moses and reinforced by the Prophets. About the things that God has commanded us, there is no negotiation, for they come directly from the nature of God. They constitute the foundation for our communion with him. To go against the Commandments of God is to reject the life he invites us to enjoy through the Law and the Prophets. Our Lord and Saviour made it clear that he did not come to abolish or mitigate the demands of the Law and the Prophets, but to reinforce and fulfil them. Obedience to the Law of God forms the structure of divine life in us. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ gives us a spiritual life and structure to live the Commandments with ease. In Mt 19:16-29, Jesus made it clear to the young man and to us that it is impossible to inherit eternal life without keeping the Commandments of God.

In our desire to enjoy temporal pleasures, while hoping to enjoy eternal life, we tend to blur the demarcation between the Commandments of God and his counsels. Like Jerusalem, we not only break the Commandments of God, but we also go back on our oaths to God. By our own volition and never by force, we make oaths to follow divine counsel. Making oaths to God is for those who keep the Commandments, for the Commandments are the foundation for the oaths. Hence, we fail in our oaths when we break the Commandments. Thus, the Lord said to Jerusalem through the Prophet Ezekiel: “Jerusalem, I will treat you as you deserve, you who have despised your oath even to the extent of breaking a covenant, but I will remember the covenant that I made with you when you were a girl, and I will conclude a covenant with you that shall last for ever.” God promises to treat us as we deserve; that is, as his creatures, and not as our sins deserve. He treats us based on his divine goodness and compassion, and not to give us what is due to our sins. This is the divine mercy and compassion which Jesus Christ has revealed to us. Redeemed by gracious and divine outpouring of mercy and compassion, we cannot fail to show a similar mercy and compassion to our brothers and sisters; even more so, to our spouses. Yahweh espoused Jerusalem in her youth and beauty and did not repudiate her completely in her unfaithfulness and sinfulness, but renewed his covenant of love with her.

The story of Jerusalem is the story of each of us. We have lived in disdain of God’s Commandments and covenant with us. But he redeemed us through the life and death of his Son, Jesus Christ. He keeps forgiving and renewing us through his word and Sacraments. Based on this unbreakable bond of God’s love revealed in Jesus Christ, the Christian spouses must maintain their vows to each other. Just as we explained in the case of forgiveness of wrongs done to us by our neighbours, the vows of the spouses are instances of God’s faithful covenant with his Church, and with each of us. According to our Lord, to marry or not to marry falls under the divine counsels. We must keep the Commandments on marriage and fornication if we choose to marry or not marry, respectively. “It was because you were so unteachable’ he said ‘that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but it was not like this from the beginning. Now I say this to you: the man who divorces his wife—I am not speaking of fornication—and marries another, is guilty of adultery.’” Fornication falls under the Commandments of God, which we must keep. But marriage falls under divine counsels. Once we choose to marry, the vows are sacred and require the spouses to be faithful to God and to each other as God is faithful.  

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, understanding the beauty and sacredness of marriage, and the mutual support spouses are supposed to give each other, gave his life so that a prisoner may go back to his family. He was born on 8 January 1894 in Poland. He joined the Franciscans in Lwow in 1910 and was ordained eight years later. He used all the means of communication then to preach the Gospel. He founded a newspaper and a sodality called the Knights of Mary Immaculate, which spread widely in Poland and abroad. He founded a community in Teresin in 1927, called ‘city of Mary,’ which centred round the Franciscan friary. It attracted many lay people, became self-supporting, published many periodicals and also owned a radio station. He went to Japan in 1930 to study Buddhism and Shintoism; through the Japanese edition of his newspaper, he spread the Christian message in a Japanese cultural way. He set up a ‘Garden of the Immaculate,’ in Nagasaki that survived the atomic bomb. He was arrested in 1941 and sent to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. There, he gave up his life for an inmate with a family who was selected to be killed in reprisal for the escape of a prisoner. The man was present at his canonization. May his prayers help us to live as Christ to others.

Let us pray: O God, who filled the Priest and Martyr Saint Maximilian Kolbe with a burning love for the Immaculate Virgin Mary and with zeal for souls and love of neighbour, graciously grant, through his intercession, that, striving for your glory by eagerly serving others, we may be conformed, even until death, to your Son. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.