Flora Cantábrica

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Saint Maximilian Kolbe
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Polish Franciscan. Dedicated to Catholic journalism, he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941, and offered to die in place of a Polish compatriot, married and father of a family, who had been condemned to the hunger bunker.
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Around 1906, an event occurs that marks a fundamental milestone in the life of

Maximiliano leaves his mother worried and disconcerted. She tells it herself, a few months after
artyrdom of the son. «I knew in advance, based on an extraordinary case that happened to him during his childhood, that Maximilian would die a martyr. I just don’t remember if it happened before or after his first confession.
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Once I didn’t like a prank at all, and I reproached him: My child, who knows what will become of you! Afterwards, I didn’t think any more, but I noticed that the boy had changed so radically, that he couldn’t recognize himself anymore. We had a small altar hidden between two closets, before which he often retired without being noticed and prayed, crying. In general, he had a behavior beyond his age, always collected and serious, and when he prayed, he burst into tears. I was worried, thinking about some illness, and I asked him: is something wrong with you? You have to tell everything to your mom!
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Trembling with emotion and with his eyes filled with tears, he told me: «Mom, when you reproached me, I asked the Virgin to tell me what would become of me. The same thing in the church, I begged her again. Then the Virgin appeared to me. Virgin, holding two crowns: one white and one red. She looked at me lovingly and asked me if I wanted those two crowns. The white one meant that I would persevere in purity and the red one that I would be a martyr. (both of them). Then the Virgin looked at me sweetly and disappeared.»
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A MAGAZINE
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In January 1922, a group of young conventual Franciscans from the Krakow seminary took to the streets with the first issue of Rycerz Niepokalanej (the Knight of the Immaculate Conception) under their arms. The people were surprised. It was not normal to find a friar selling magazines on the street
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He wants to «cover the entire world with printed paper to give souls back the joy of living.» There the growth of the M.I. It will be dizzying in both aspects: editorial and vocational. Father Maximilian undertook this new editorial task that became perhaps the most fruitful work of apostolate in the name of the Immaculate Conception. Like any new work, it experienced initial difficulties. It took her time to be known, appreciated and impose herself.
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Father Kolbe is on the secret police blacklist. Because? Father Kolbe is the superior of Niepokalanow, whose Marian activities have such influence throughout Poland. The Nazis want to destroy that influence and at the same time want to take revenge for the fact that «The Little Diary» came out of those workshops, whose patriotic and Catholic preaching had so enraged them. Even worse, Father Kolbe, due to his priesthood, culture and position, was a notable leader. The occupation program included the extermination of intellectuals and leaders. Furthermore, Jews were given asylum in Niepokalanow. In the anti-Semitic eyes of the Nazis, this was a crime that deserved the punishment of concentration camps.
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.. Father Maximilian Kolbe, who always advised not to do anything hastily, but only after having acquired sufficient serenity and entrusting oneself to the will of God and the Immaculate Conception, had to proceed that hot afternoon at the end of July 1941. , when he offered to die in place of another prisoner. When he took the step forward, he was not thinking only of that poor father, but of the remaining nine, unjustly condemned to die, slowly, of hunger and thirst. They also needed to be saved, healed from so many wounds and reconciled before their death.
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For two weeks something changed in Auschwitz: for the first time there were no screams of despair, nor were there any blasphemies or threats heard in the basements of the hunger bunker. We know what happened there from an exceptional witness, a Pole who served as an interpreter between the condemned and the German guards. Here is part of his story:
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Every day from the cell where the unfortunate people were held, prayers recited out loud, the rosary and religious songs could be heard, to which the prisoners from other cells also joined.
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.. It is possible that those words written by him years ago resonated in the mind of Father Maximilian: «How much peace and authentic happiness does the conviction that he surely fulfills the will of God, of being safely an instrument in the hands of a religious instill in him? of the Immaculate… In short, how sweet his death will be; with what serenity and what sweetness will his heart be filled with the awareness that in everything he has fulfilled solely and exclusively the will of God and the will of the Immaculate Conception…»
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.. The sacrifice was consummated on August 14. An injection of carbolic acid put an end to the painful agony of the four prisoners who were still alive, among them Father Kolbe.
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