A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Matthew. Jesus said to his disciples, if your brother should submit if your brother should commit some wrong against you, go and point out his fault, but keep it between the two of you. Don't be a blabbermouth. If your brother listens to you, you have won him over. But if he does not listen, summon another so that every case may stand on the word of two or three witnesses.
If he ignores the witnesses, refer it to the church. And if he ignores even the church, then treat him as you would a gentile or a tax collector. I assure you, whatever you declare bound on earth shall hold bound in heaven, and whatever you declare loosed on earth shall be held loosed in heaven. Again, I tell you, if two of you join your voices on earth to pray for anything whatsoever, it shall be granted to you by my father in heaven. For two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst.
And this is the word of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen. In 1982 up in Wilmington, Delaware, that's up the road apiece, a not so young man who was a TV personality, a Jew, made this statement that when he was a boy and a prisoner in Auschwitz, One man restored him to faith, and that was father Maximilian Maria Kolbe. This little Jewish boy had seen his parents and many of his friends and relatives destroyed. And, of course, it's the same old argument.
If god allows such things as this to happen, I don't want any parts of that god even if it exists. So he lost his faith. His faith was restored not by the final and ultimate sacrifice that Maximilian Maria Kobe made. It was the little Jewish boy was won over by this fact, that this priest, who was not only equally a prisoner but was most brutally treated because he was a priest, wiped the tears from his eyes and consoled him. That's what won back the little Jew to God.
Today, we are celebrating the feast of Saint Maximilian Maria Colbe, martyr. Because in in October 1941 in Auschwitz, because one prisoner had escaped and had not been captured, one man. The commandant ordered 10 arbitrarily selected prisoners to be starved to death. One of them, I can't pronounce his name, his first name was Ferdinand. When his name was when he was pointed out, he crumbled up and said, what's going to happen to me and my family?
Now this is important. And with that, out stepped this nondescript prisoner, and offered to take the married man's place, the father's place. It turned out to be Maximilian Maria Colby. Now the thing that apparently remember that this man for whom Colby gave his life was present at the canonization in Rome in 1982. And Time magazine had a picture of our holy father embracing this Polish father who had been spared because of Colby's sacrifice in 1941.
Now the point I wanna make is this, what what relevance has this for you? This is terrifically important. We're not in Auschwitz. In a sense, we're worse off. And I'm not saying that crazily.
In a sense, we're we're worse off. The point I want to make is before Colby ever went into that prison, he was a very well known, very eager, very industrious, very dedicated, and a very devout follower of Mary his whole life. Almost from birth he was a victim of tuberculosis. He was supposed to be dying all the time. He didn't he disappointed the prophets, he didn't die.
He established what he called Maryvilles. He established these Maryvilles not only in Poland, but in Brazil and in Japan, and in a place, a state called Illinois of The United States He was well known, he was a big guy, he hated the Nazis. So when they took over Poland, he was one of the first they took in the imprisoned. Now, I want to bring in Saint Augustine of Hippo now, March to April. I've just was reading one of his sermons, and in there, it was a feast of the martyr.
And Augustine, Now remember, this is a man writing in the fourth and fifth century AD. He said, look, we're not all called to become martyrs. All followers of Christ are like flowers in a garden. And some are roses, some are lilies, some are dandelions, some are daisies, some are violets, but we're all flowers. And we all have one calling.
And we are being called not because we're perfect, not because we're saints, but we are called to perfection. We are called to be saints. That's the point. Some of you may remember 1982 when this canonization took place. Mr.
Cohen, writing for the illustrious Washington Post, had a very critical column in which he pointed out that Colby had written something, some time or other, which he interpreted as being very anti Semitic. He forgot that Colby, even before he became a prisoner, became a very definite champion and a refuge for the persecuted Jews in Poland. Of course, that's all forgotten. But you see, Cohen's argument was, how can you say this man's perfect? Who said he was perfect?
Who said that? The church doesn't. He was called to perfection. He gave the ultimate sacrifice. He gave a a perfect demonstration of love sacrificing his life completely freely for nothing.
He didn't even know this guy. Didn't even know his name. All he knew was he was a father, and a a family needs a parent. And in a in a sense, Colby gave his life for the sanctity sanctity of the family. Now this is the point I want to bring: We are all called upon to be Kobies.
Not in the sense that we're going to be in an outstretch, and we may be, I don't know. But who knows what the future is? Who knows what today is? Let's be sick. Who knows what today is?
What's going to happen by noon today? Who knows? A lot of people are going to be dead by noon today. A lot of people are going to be dead by 06:00 tonight. They won't have dinner with their families tonight.
So what do we do? What are we called upon to do? We're called upon to do precisely what Colby did. He acted I'm not talking about Auschwitz, I'm talking about the forty some years before Auschwitz, when against against the odds of his bad health, lack of support from superiors, a lot of suspicion about him, he had difficulties of all sorts. Was he perfect?
No. All he tried to do was to be perfect. And now I remember another, just to show you how Catholic the church is with a small c. Think of, Benedict Joseph Labre, the beggar of Rome, second half of the eighteenth century. Here's a man born in France, wanted to be, he felt himself called upon to be a member of a most austere religious order, And he tried and tried, and they wouldn't take him.
They didn't want him. He couldn't make it. And Benedict Joseph Labre became absolutely a beggar of Rome. I mean, a stinking, ugly looking, unwholesome, repellent beggar of Rome. And he's a saint.
He's a saint. As Augustine says, we are many flowers. We are all called upon to do our bit. We as Newman says, each one of us has a work to do, and don't you try to measure this success. Remember, Newman, the man who wrote that, also wrote that nothing that he ever tried to do for God succeeded.
Every single thing was a flop. And this is true. This is no exaggeration at all. So I wanna you are you. Your life is your life.
Your existence is your existence. You have it to live what for? To be nothing short of a saint. Not because you're perfect, but because you wanna be perfect with Jesus Christ. In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit.
Amen.