Of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. The disciples came up to Jesus with this question. Who is of greatest importance in the kingdom of God? Jesus, in reply, called a little child over to him and stood the child in their midst and said to them, I assure you, unless you change and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of God. Whoever makes himself lowly, becoming like this child is of greatest importance in that heavenly reign.
Notice the kingdom of God, heavenly reign, not this world. Whoever welcomes one such child for my sake welcomes me. See that you never despise one of these little ones. I assure you, there are angels in heaven constantly. Behold my heavenly father's face.
Now what do you think about about this? This? Our lord continued. A man owns a 100 sheep, and one of them wanders away. You know how sheep are.
Will that man not leave the 99 out on the hills and then go in search for the stray? And if he succeeds in finding it, believe me, he is happier about this, one, than about the 99 that he left behind and did not wander away. Just so, it is no part of your heavenly father's plan that a single one of these little ones shall ever come to grief. And that is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
As you can see, I hope, I'm wearing red vestments, sign that the church today is honoring a martyr, martyr, which means that somebody that we honor today laid down his or her life for the faith. Look, for the faith. Not that they did an a good deed, but that they died for the faith, which is a commitment. That's that creed we say, which is so exciting, you know. And yet, this is what these vestments mean, that somebody thought as enough of that creed, which is so unemotional, leaves us perfectly unaffected for the most part, was willing to lay down their life for it.
And what more can you do than that? Well, I'll tell you what more you can do than that. You can live it. You can live it. And with all due respect, maybe that is harder in many instances than laying down your life in one fell swoop.
Now today, we are celebrating the memorial of a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe. That's the way we call him in English anyway. As you know, my Polish isn't what it used to be, and it never was anything. Anyway, he's called Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish priest of Franciscan. He died in Auschwitz in 1941, and forty one years later was canonized, which is pretty swift going.
And it wasn't I mean, his canonization wasn't simply thought of when we got a Polish pope, because Paul the sixth was very eager to have Maximilian Kolbe canonized as a saint and martyr. Now notice, martyr. Now Kolbe was a Polish priest, a Franciscan. First point I'd like you to remember is this, he practically was a sick and ill man his whole life. He had tuberculosis.
And from the day he went into the seminary until the day that he he died of starvation in a in a in a cell of Auschwitz, the man was a sick man, fighting tuberculosis the whole way. Now, of course, what we remember him for, and which is the dramatic finality of his life, unfortunately, overshadows his life. He was a very outspoken opponent of the Nazis. So naturally, very naturally, when they took over Poland, he was one of the first that they slapped into Auschwitz. And, you don't hear too much about it, but priests were not treated any better than the Jews.
And a matter of fact, in some instances, they were treated worse just to be a priest. So Colby went to Auschwitz because he stood up against the Nazis on principle. Faith, Catholic truth, and today we say, who cares? What you do is what matters. It isn't important what you believe.
It's how you live that matters most. Yeah. Okay. That's not what Colby died for. He died for his faith.
Now he was in that in Auschwitz, and he conducted himself even though he was treated as dirt as a priest. As a priest. He never forgot it no matter what garments he wore. Think of this in terms of my well chosen remarks yesterday about externals. He made it his business to search out the weak, those who needed support and comfort, and no less an authority than Time magazine.
And you see, I didn't see many heads bow, but you know that's the great authority. Anyway, my authority for this is Time magazine, where they point out that as far as they know, the only living in '19 in '80 1982, subsequent to 1982, the only living Jew who was acquainted with us with Colby and Auschwitz in 1941, was a Jewish TV commentator in Wilmington, Delaware. That's up the railroad track from Baltimore. And at the time of Auschwitz and when Colby was there, this boy was only 12 years old or so. Both his parents had been destroyed.
He had lost all faith in God. He lost faith in anything. Who wouldn't? And it was Colby. This I'm quoting now from Time Magazine.
It was Colby who went and this young man said, dried the tears from my eyes, encouraged me to live, and restored my faith in God. This all happened before he went down into that dungeon to starve to death. Furthermore, he was an outstanding Franciscan priest in not only in Poland but in Japan and in The United States. He founded what was called Maryvilles. He he had founded a monastery for Franciscans in Poland which before the second world war had over 800 monks in it.
They had their own daily paper. He had a circuit he had a paper dedicated to our blessed lady that had a circulation of over a million copies. So he didn't come to Auschwitz an unknown. He didn't all of a sudden bloom in Auschwitz. Auschwitz is simply the of his life in this world and the beginning of his true life in the kingdom of God, the reign of God.
Now he was canonized in October, and I think it was about December that our friend Cohen, writing in the Washington Post, had a long column where he severely criticized the church for canonizing Colby. Because according to Cohen, Colby had been an anti Semite. And that to call him a saint meant that you said he was perfect. And therefore, the the church was very, very remiss, even encouraging anti Semitism. You read the article, I guess.
I don't know. I still have just read it. Makes my hair stand on end, what's left of it. You you know, I can't how does an article like that get published? First of all, who says that sainthood means that the church says the person was perfect?
Who said that? Was Peter perfect? Was Ignatius Loyola perfect? Was Francis of Assisi perfect? Was Theresa of Avila perfect?
Name a saint who was perfect. Name a saint that the church says was perfect outside of the blessed mother. It's a completely erroneous idea What the church does say when she says formally that this person is a saint is that they practice virtue to an heroic degree. That's what sainthood means. It doesn't mean you were perfect.
It may mean you were very imperfect, but that you tried and that you tried to an heroic degree. That's what sainthood means. You may have been a a sinner of the worst rank as we have plenty of them. You have plenty of them. That is Kobe.
We don't say Kobe was perfect. I'm not talking about this matter of his anti that Cohen quotes. In English, of course, in English. Remember, so that's a translation. That's what somebody thinks that the Polish text I I don't I've never seen the Polish text neither is Cohen.
And, anyway, leaving that aside, we are not today remembering Colby. And remember, we're not remembering him as we remember Lincoln or Jefferson or or any or even or anybody. We are remembering him as a present person. You heard the gospel this day about taking care of little babies. Those are mighty strong words our lord used.
What could fit in better than that with a man who had such a love of humanity? And this this is very he Time magazine says that he exposed his life and saved hundreds of Jews from extermination before he himself wound up in in Auschwitz. We are memorializing. That is true. But we are talking about this man in the present tense as a saint in the kingdom of god where we hope we are right now.
I mean, baptism put us there. We haven't obtained it, but we're there. We're on route. We're traveling. But not in the kingdom of god actually yet in the sense in which we've made it.
We haven't made it. We can get off the track and go in the ditch and be lost. Let's face it. There is hell just as surely as there is heaven. And so today, as we remember Colby, we are talking about somebody who's on our side in the present tense.
And let's not think exclusively of that dramatic spectacular finale of his life, where because one person had escaped from Boussfield, the commandant simply picked 10 men and put them into a dungeon to starve to death. One of the men selected at random said, what was going to happen to my wife and children? Colby didn't know him from Adam or Eve. Colby stepped the very fact that Colby stepped forward could have meant his instant death. This is one of the peculiar things about it, that when he stepped out of the ranks now these are facts.
When he stepped out of the ranks, nothing happened. Ordinarily, he'd have been shot right like that. So the commandant said, I don't care. As long as we get 10 men, go ahead. So off went Kofi, down into the dungeon.
Dungeon. Took him two weeks to die and still he didn't die. They had to put him to death with some kind of an injection. Now his all of this is very well documented. We're not talking in terms of myth.
We're talking about people who were there who gave testimony at his canonization. We're not dealing with wishful thinking or with fictionalized sainthood sainthood. Now this is the man that we're remembering today. That was a spectacular spectacular gesture at his canonization. The man that he whose place he took was present, and time has a picture of the holy father embracing this now old man that Colby gave his life for.
And the man told the holy father that he had never had a chance to thank Colby. All that happened between them was, as Colby was being let let away, their eyes met, Period. Now the point I wanna make from this is not the spectacular finale of Colby's life, which was spectacular, of course. I wanna come back to what I said. It's of course, martyrdom is a tremendous thing.
But remember, to live a long life dedicated to God, trying to make go make a go of it, trying to serve him, having your good days and your bad days, having your successes and having your failures, maybe that is even more. That's perseverance. Once Colby made that commitment and was pushed into that hole in the ground, there was no coming back. He couldn't change his mind. No no one was listening.
It was over and done with. We know how he conducted himself down there too. He was still a priest down in that dungeon. He was still a leader of his little flock of nine other men. But what we can take from Colby is that to be a saint simply means that you're trying to be a good Christian, that you're trying to follow Christ, that you are dedicated your life to God, and you're trying to make it for his kingdom in this world.
As Colby said in a little prayer, if you seek God and love God, you will then for sure love your fellow man. But don't make the mistake. That's me talking. Don't make the mistake of reversing that. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit.
Amen.