Ellicott City - Rome - Harmesh

August 13, 2011

Peace and Good,

I am writing this blog from southern Poland. The entire General Definitory is here for the 70th anniversary of the martyrdom of St. Maximillian Kolbe. We arrived here yesterday, and today we went to Auschwitz for a tour of the camp where our brother franciscan died in the starvation bunker. Remember, Kolbe was already famous for his work in promoting devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. He had begun a magazine that had over a million copies a month. He had a daily newspaper with 300,000 copies a month. He had a radio station. He began a mission in Japan (Nagasaki). He was arrested by the Nazi's because he was a leader of culture in Poland.

One day a prisoner escaped and the rule was ten prisoners had to die in the starvation bunker when that happened. He was not chosen, but one man who was chosen cried out that he would never see his wife or children again. St. Maximillian broke ranks and offered himself in place of that man. He survived in the bunker (although he was very ill most of his life) and killed on the vigil of the Assumption. Tomorrow we will be walking from the friary to the camp to celebrate Mass where he died.

St. Maximillian is the patron saint of intervenous drug addicts (for he was eventually killed with an injection of carbolic acid).

From Poland, we will be going to Spain for World Youth Day.

I finished a couple of books. One was a book called Hallowland by Amanda Hocking. She is interesting. She could never get published, so she published her own books on Kindle e books and she is now a millionaire. The story is a standard Zombie story, but not all that bad.

A second book was the Other Bolyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. This is the story of Ann Bolyn's sister, who also had an affair with King Henry VIII. It is written as a bit of a scandal sheet, but nevertheless was still good.

Have a good week.

Shalom
fr. Jude