After the outbreak of World War II in Poland, the inspiring figure of Saint Maximilian Kolbe emerged, who is remembered every August 14. His brave fight for souls found echo through a printing press and an additional powerful instrument: the Miraculous Medal.
“Even if a person is of the worst type, if only he agrees to wear the medal, give it to him… and then pray for him, and at the opportune moment strive to bring him closer to his Immaculate Mother, so that he can turn to her in all difficulties and temptations”, are Kolbe’s words about the Medal.
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“This is truly our heavenly weapon,” the saint assured, describing the medal as “a bullet with which a faithful soldier strikes the enemy, that is, evil, and thus rescues souls.”
The Miraculous Medal is a sacramental inspired by the Marian apparition to Saint Catherine Labore in Paris in 1830. The Virgin Mary appeared to her as the Immaculate Conception, she was dressed in white and standing on a globe with light coming from her hands and crushing a snake under his foot.
“A voice told me: ‘We have to make a medal similar to what you are seeing. All the people who wear it will feel the protection of the Virgin,’” Saint Catherine revealed at the time.
As a Franciscan seminarian studying in Rome in 1917, Kolbe was moved by the story of the role the Miraculous Medal played in the conversion of Alphonsus of Regensburg.
Regensburg was a French Freemason and an atheist of Jewish descent who received the grace of conversion while wearing a Miraculous Medal given to him by one of his Catholic friends in Rome. The Virgin Mary appeared to him on January 20, 1842 in a side chapel of the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte in Rome.
Saint Maximilian Kolbe chose to celebrate his first Mass on April 29, 1918 in the side chapel of Sant’Andrea delle Fratte, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Regensburg.
The latter was ordained a Jesuit priest, eventually leaving the order to move to Jerusalem in 1855, where he founded a convent for sisters in the Congregation of Our Lady of Sion, a congregation founded to “witness in the Church and in the world that God follows being faithful in his love for the Jewish people.”
Saint Maximilian gave his life in place of a fellow prisoner in Auschwitz, a man who had a wife and children. He died from an injection of carbolic acid (phenol) in the concentration camp on August 14, 1941. Nazi officials cremated the saint’s body on the feast of the Assumption of Mary.
Kolbe is known to be an effective evangelist and missionary. Before moving to Japan in 1930, he made a pilgrimage to the Chapel of the Miraculous Medal on the Rue de Bac in Paris.
Saint John Paul II remembered Saint Maximilian’s visit when he prayed in the Paris chapel in 1980.
“I come as a pilgrim after all those who have come to this chapel for one hundred and fifty years, and like all the Christian people who gather here every day to communicate to you their joy, trust and supplications. I come as Blessed Maximilian Kolbe; Before his trip to Japan, exactly fifty years ago, he came here to seek your particular support to propagate what he would later call ‘The Militia of the Immaculate’ and undertake his prodigious work of spiritual renewal under your patronage, before giving his life for his brothers, noted Saint John Paul II.
Saint Maximilian formed The Militia of the Immaculate Conception in 1917 to “bring each individual with Mary to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus.” He asked all his members to wear the Miraculous Medal as a sign of his total consecration to Mary.
“Now, in this era of the Immaculate Conception, the Blessed Virgin has given humanity the ‘Miraculous Medal’. Her heavenly origin has been proven by innumerable miracles of healing and particularly of conversion,” Kolbe wrote.
“Immaculata herself, upon revealing it, promised all those who would use it many graces; and since conversion and sanctification are divine graces from God, the Miraculous Medal will be one of the best means to obtain these gifts,” she added.
St. Maximilian also added to St. Catherine’s prayer associated with the sacramental: “O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you.” To this, Kolbe added, “and for all those who do not turn to you, especially the enemies of the Church and those who recommend you. Amen”.
Translated and adapted by ACI Prensa. Originally published on August 9, 2020 in CNA. It has been updated for republication.
Courtney Mares
Courtney Mares is the Vatican correspondent for Catholic News Agency (CNA), EWTN News’ English agency. A graduate of Harvard University, she has reported from news bureaus on three continents and received the Gardner Fellowship for her work with North Korean refugees.