17^th September 2006
Mark 8.27-end

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

Karl Marx, in his often quoted criticism of religion, said that religion is the opium of the people.  When he said that, he was making a point about the exploitation of the poor by the economic forces of capitalism, but the quotation is a strong one, and suggests that religion provides an analgesic, or a comfort blanket, that shields believers from reality.

There may be some truth in that: our religion does indeed provide comfort; but it’s not possible to say that Christianity is an easy option.   Jesus certainly said, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light; but he also said that we must be prepared, if we are to be his followers, to deny ourselves, to take up our own cross.

On Friday evening Joan and I went to an amazingly powerful play which made me think about this.  The play was about Father Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish Catholic priest who gave his life in the concentration camp at Auschwitz to save another prisoner.  I’d heard the story before, as you probably have too, but in case you haven’t I’d like to tell it; and it’s a story worth pondering on.

He was canonized by the Catholic Church as Saint Maximilian Kolbe in 1982 by Pope John Paul II, and declared a modern martyr for his heroic actions in what must be the cruellest period of modern history.

He was born in Russian-occupied Poland in 1894 into a Catholic family and remained a devoted follower of Catholicism.   As a boy he had a powerful conversion experience, and joined an order of Franciscan Friars.  He studied in Rome, and did missionary work in Japan and India.

Returning to the Warsaw area, he became director of Poland's chief Catholic publishing complex, which published both a monthly magazine with a circulation of about one million and a daily paper with a circulation of about 125,000.  He had enormous abilities, and became head of his monastery.

When the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, he was offered special status as a collaborator, but refused to deny his Polish identity.   He realized that the monastery would be taken over, and sent most of the friars home, warning them not to join the underground resistance.   The monastery was ransacked, and Father Kolbe and about 40 other friars were transported to a holding camp in Germany.

They were released and allowed to return to the monastery in December, 1939.  The monastery became a refugee camp for thousands of Poles and Jews seeking escape from Nazi persecution.  The friars shared everything they had with the refugees, and the monastery became a universal shelter of brotherhood.   For this reason, Father Kolbe and his friars soon came under suspicion by the Gestapo.

Father Kolbe, as a journalist, publisher and intellectual who had refused German citizenship, was considered a threat to German domination.   To incriminate him, the Gestapo permitted one final printing of his widely circulated magazine in December of 1940, and it was in this issue that he wrote this:

“The real conflict is inner conflict.  Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of concentration camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are victories on the battle-field if we ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”

On February 17, 1941, Father Kolbe was again arrested, this time on charges of aiding Jews and the Polish underground.  Gestapo officers who were shown around the whole monastery were astonished at the small amount of food that was prepared for the brothers.  Father Kolbe was sent to the infamous Pawiak prison in German-occupied Warsaw, and was singled out for special ill treatment.

Father Kolbe and four companions were deported to Auschwitz on May 28th, 1941, which was then both a labour and a death camp.  Over the entrance gate of this concentration camp was the sign in German: Arbeit macht frei – “Work makes you free”, a mockery of human spirit and human endeavour.   Few who passed through that gate left the camp alive.  On entering Auschwitz, the Camp Commandant told prisoners that Jews had the right to live only two weeks, and Roman Catholic priests one month.  Cruelly, they were told that the only way out of the camp was through the chimneys of the crematorium.

Father Kolbe received the striped convict garments and was tattooed with his prison number.  He was put to work immediately carrying blocks of stone for the construction of a new crematorium wall.

Prisoners at Auschwitz were slowly and systematically starved, and their pitiful rations were barely enough to sustain a child: one cup of ersatz coffee in the morning, and weak soup and half a loaf of bread after work.  When food was brought, everyone struggled to get their place and be sure of a portion.   But Kolbe stood aside to give way to others, although he was starving himself, and frequently there would be none left for him.  At other times he shared his meagre ration of soup or bread with others.

One day, one of the officers found some of the heaviest planks he could lay hold of and personally loaded them on the Franciscan's back, ordering him to run.   When he collapsed, the officer kicked him in the stomach and face and had his men give him fifty lashes.  When the priest lost consciousness he was thrown in the mud and left for dead.  But his companions managed to smuggle him to the camp hospital.  Although he was suffering greatly, he secretly heard confessions in the hospital and spoke to the other inmates of the love of God.

In Auschwitz, where hunger and hatred reigned and faith evaporated, this man opened his heart to others and spoke of God's infinite love.  He seemed never to think of himself.  In the harshness of the slaughterhouse Father Kolbe maintained the gentleness of Christ.  At night he’d seldom lie down to rest before moving from bunk to bunk, saying: ‘I am a Catholic priest.  Can I do anything for you?’

Near the end of July, a prisoner apparently escaped, and men from Kolbe's bunker were paraded in the blazing midday sun, knowing what to expect: for each prisoner who escaped, ten would be killed.  One man from each line was selected at random, including a sergeant, Francis Gajowniczek.  He cried out that he would never see his wife and children again, and Father Kolbe stepped out from the ranks and offered to take Gajowniczek's place: “I wish to die for that man.   I am old; he has a wife and children.”  The SS man didn’t care who went to the bunker, so long as there were ten of them, so Father Kolbe and the nine others were led off to the death chamber of Cell 18.  Father Kolbe pleaded with his fellow prisoners to forgive their persecutors and to overcome evil with good.   When he was beaten by the guards, he never cried out.  Instead, he prayed for those who tormented him.

After two weeks of starvation, only four of the ten men were still alive, including Kolbe.  The cells were needed for other prisoners, and Kolbe and the other three were executed with an injection of carbolic acid in the heart.

It’s a powerful story, and it made really stunning drama.  And of course it’s not just a story – it’s the true account of a man who has now, rightly, been declared a saint, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, whose feast day is celebrated on 14th August, the anniversary of his death.  Can we call his Christian faith ‘the opium of the people’?  I don’t think so.

The play argued whether his sacrifice achieved anything.  The man whose life he saved, Francis Gajowniczek, was an ordinary council clerk, with nothing like the ability of Kolbe, or the influence he had.  When he returned to his wife he discovered that his two sons had died in the war.   The Communist journalist who interviews him in the play asks what he has made of his life to justify the sacrifice Kolbe made – and the answer was that it was his ordinariness that made the gesture so much the more powerful.  This, the journalist scoffs at.

None of us are likely to find ourselves in a situation remotely like that of the prisoners in Auschwitz.  None of us are remotely likely to find ourselves in a situation where anything like Kolbe’s courage is asked of us.  But I don’t think that any Christian act – either on the scale of Kolbe’s sacrifice, or the smallest bit of good that we might do – is futile.  Any Christian action makes the world a better place.  And our actions often have consequences much greater than we imagine: St James uses two images in the epistle we heard (James 3. 1-12): the large and powerful horse whose actions are controlled by the small bit in its mouth, and the heavy boat which is steered by a small rudder.  Any Christian action makes the world a better place.   And as Christians that’s what we are called to do.  If that makes us feel better, and that allows the sceptic to say that our religion is like an opiate, then all well and good: but the fact is that we are called to follow in the way of the Cross – wherever that might take us.

Let’s finish with a prayer:

Most loving Father, whose Son Jesus Christ came to give his life as a ransom for many: Give us the grace, as you did to your servant Maximilian Kolbe, to be always ready to come to the aid of those in need or distress, not counting the cost; that so we may follow in the footsteps of your Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.