Common Sense Reborn

⁴Sing to the Lord, all you godly ones!

Praise His holy name.

⁵For His anger lasts only a moment,

but His favor lasts a lifetime!

Weeping may last through the night,

but joy comes in the morning. (Psalm 30:4-5)

Last night I spent some time reading Psalms, starting with Psalm 30 and the verses above jumping out at me. Many Psalms sing out the promise of hope and salvation. I wondered which of these Psalms helped give those trapped in the hell of Auschwitz Concentration Camp (which if you missed yesterday’s post, I had the privilege to visit). And for the Jews, there is this pivotal question: if belief in Jesus is the only way to the Father, did these stubborn Jews who still refused to believe in Jesus, find paradise when exiting the gas chamber, or are they trapped in an eternal sleeping state as the Jewish religion believes? There is no mention of Heaven as a dwelling place for souls in the afterlife until Jesus preached that message. The Jews are a resilient bunch. They tolerated the most brutal genocide all hoping for the arrival of the Messiah who had already come to offer them salvation.

One of the our assignments on our visit to Auschwitz was to find four examples of resiliency. Beside the few that were enable to endure brutal torture and find liberation at the end, there really were no stories of resiliency. The only story of hope and sacrifice came from a Roman Catholic Monk: Father Maximilian Kolbe.

When a prisoner was discovered having escaped during roll call, the SS Commander picked 10 random prisoners to suffer death by starvation to punish the masses, and continue to hold the population under fear and control. One of those ten chosen was Franciszek Gajowniczek, who pleaded with the SS to spare his life due to him having a wife and children. Father Kolbe stepped forward to offer his life for Gajowniczek’s, and the SS, surprised by the sacrifice from Father Kolbe, allowed the exchange. Father Kolbe endured over two weeks of starvation, praying and singing over the other nine prisoners. When after two weeks had passed and the SS went in to clean out the dead, they found Father Kolbe still alive. They decided to kill him by lethal injection and it is said that Father Kolbe stood patiently and offered his left arm to the SS.

Mary Craig wrote this in her article “Blessed Maximillian Kolbe, Priest hero of a death camp”:

“His reputation spread far and wide, through the Nazi camps and beyond. After the war newspapers all over the world were deluged with articles about this ‘saint for our times’, ‘saint of progress’, ‘giant of holiness’. Biographies were written, and everywhere there were claims of cures being brought about through his intercession. ‘The life and death of this one man alone’, wrote the Polish bishops, ‘can be proof and witness of the fact that the love of God can overcome the greatest hatred, the greatest injustice, even death itself.’ The demands for his beatification became insistent, and at last on 12 August 1947 proceedings started. Seventy-five witnesses were questioned. His cause was introduced on 16 March 1960. When all the usual objections had been overcome, the promoter spoke of ‘the charm of this magnificent fool’. On 17 October 1971 Maximilian Kolbe was beatified. Like his master Jesus Christ he had loved his fellow-men to the point of sacrificing his life for them. ‘Greater love hath no man than this … and these were the opening words of the papal decree introducing the process of beatification.” (Craig, Mary)

Saint Kolbe was the only known story of a person sacrificing their life for another in Auschwitz. A Christian friar living up to the command of his Savior Jesus Christ. The greatest hope there is comes only from Jesus Christ. The world owes it to the 11 million Jews killed in World War II to continue to spread the truth, the way, and the life that is only found in Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah the world has been waiting for.