EWTN friars find inspiration in unusual relic: St. Maximilian Kolbe’s beard

August 14 was the feast day of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, a saint known for his heroic martyrdom in Auschwitz, Poland in 1941, when he volunteered to be executed in place of another prisoner.

Like many Catholic saints, today there are relics of Fr. Kolbe, which are pieces of a saint’s body (first class) or objects they owned (second class) that are venerated by the Catholic faithful due to the closeness of the saint. with God.

But in Kolbe’s case, the only part of his body that still exists is his characteristic long beardwhich a fellow friar managed to save before the saint’s death. The rest of his body was cremated in the ovens of Auschwitz after the Nazis murdered him.

Today, the Kolbe Beard relics have special meaning for Father John Paul Mary, MFVA, who serves as chaplain to EWTN employees. The friars of the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word (MFVA) They keep a relic of Kolbe’s beard, which was a gift to EWTN, on the television set while recording their weekly EWTN show “Life on the Rock” (EWTN is the parent company of ACI Prensa).

Kolbe, also a Franciscan friar, decided to keep the beard he had grown after returning from six years of missionary work in Japan. In those days, it was customary for missionaries to grow long beards, and Kolbe wanted to keep it as a reminder of his days as a missionary and as a reminder to always be a “missionary” of the Gospel.

The future saint eventually, after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939, made the decision to shave to avoid attracting attention. Kolbe’s founding of the Militia of the Immaculate Conception (MI), an evangelization movement identified with Mary, had placed him on the Nazi watch list.

After a fellow friar cut off Kolbe’s beard, he at first tried to save it, but Kolbe objected and told him to throw it into the stove. So, obediently, the friar threw it on the stove, but the fire was not lit, so the friar later recovered it and kept it in a pickle jar, where it was later rediscovered and identified thanks to the label that the friar friar had put in the jar.

“There is something in particular in his life that reflects the life of Christ. It is like that lamp that cannot be hidden under a basket, but must be placed high so that others can see the light,” Father John Paul told CNA, the English agency of EWTN News.

“I believe that this is true in every saint…not only in the canonized saints, but really in every human person, all the baptized, have a particular grace that God wants to work in and through them,” he added.

Kolbe’s inspiring example of love and charity during his incarceration and death from carbolic acid injection has led many to seek his intercession for those struggling with substance abuse. Father John Paul said he frequently prays for those struggling with addiction when he stands before Kolbe’s relic and that the friars work with recovering addicts through Catholic ministry. Cenacolo Community.

Father John Paul made a comparison between Saint Maximilian Kolbe and Mother Angelica, the founder of EWTN, highlighting their shared vision of harnessing modern media for evangelization. The Mother Angelica founded EWTN in 1981 as a television station with the goal of sharing the Catholic faith, building it over the decades into the largest religious media network in the world, similar to how Kolbe tirelessly used the modern media of the time. , such as magazines, pamphlets and radio, to spread the Gospel from the monastery he founded in Niepokalanów, Poland.

Additionally, Father John Paul noted that Kolbe’s spiritual practices, such as making frequent visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and his promotion of consecration to Jesus through Mary, align with the Franciscan spirituality practiced by the friars at EWTN .

Praying with relics, Father John Paul noted that the saints, who are in the presence of God in heaven, serve as a conduit through which God’s light shines, guiding the faithful toward holiness, a goal to which every Catholic should aspire.

“The relics of the saints are truly the treasure of the Church. That is what the saints are, the treasure of the Church,” said Father John Paul.

“The lives of the saints give us, I think, a ray of light into the life, death and resurrection of Christ… I think that’s really the story of (Kolbe’s) life. It is giving your life in charity and love for another man. That is the message of the Gospel. There is no greater love than that which gives one’s life for one’s friends. And Jesus is the supreme example of that,” he concluded.

Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.