Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh! Do you believe in coincidences? I don’t. To me, they’re always God-incidences!
Last week, I went back to using an old purse, and in it, I found a small booklet I bought at Marytown, Libertyville, Ill. when I went to a conference near Chicago—nearly three years ago.
Marytown is the National Shrine of St. Maximilian Kolbe. He was a Conventual Franciscan friar and priest who was martyred in the Holocaust. I have an interest in the Holocaust and WWII history, so I chose to visit the shrine.
St. John Paul II named him a Martyr of Charity, for Maximilian Kolbe, a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, asked to take the place of one of 10 concentration camp prisoners selected to be starved to death in reprisal for an apparent prisoner escape. He took the place of a man who, when chosen, cried out for his family.
Friar Maximilian was the longest surviving of the ten; he was finally put to death with an injection of carbolic acid. He was named a saint because he gave his life for another; he was named the patron saint of drug addicts—not because he was one, but because he died from a lethal injection—the way so many drug addicts die.
So after re-finding the little booklet titled, Maximilian Kolbe ~ Martyr of Charity, I began reading it again. It explains how while Maximilian was in seminary in Rome he witnessed massive demonstrations by the Freemasons against the Church. The demonstrations turned vicious and blasphemous against the Church he loved.
According to the booklet, “masonic lodges had in many cases become secretive societies with occult overtones, deist principles, and [held] socio-political platforms. Underlying their ideology was a philosophy of materialism and secular humanism, a fundamental denial of all things supernatural” (16).
Friar Maximilian realized “that modern times would come to be dominated by forces bent on excluding God from every sphere of public life” (16) Doesn’t it seem like we’re living in those times now?
To combat these forces he began to develop a “plan of evangelization to restore a biblical understanding of the world as God’s domain, the Church as God’s presence in his domain, humanity as God’s children, Jesus Christ as brother to the human race, and Mary Immaculate as Mother to all the exiled children of Eve” (Genesis 3:15).
The seminarian figured that only a supernatural weapon could counteract the modern forces of contemporary godlessness.
In October 1917, he began the “Crusade of Mary Immaculate” or in Latin, “Militia Immaculatae.” Mary’s only purpose is to bring humanity to Christ, and that was the only way Maximilian saw that the modern world could be saved.
While reading the booklet, I felt a desire to become a member of this crusade, for after witnessing on television the violent riots that hijacked the peaceful demonstrations against the execution of George Floyd, it was obvious that evil was behind the violence—both against George Floyd and against the good in Western civilization.
I believe our society is under spiritual attack. So I began thinking of enrolling in St. Maximilian Kolbe’s cause, of becoming a member of the Militia of the Immaculata. I went to the Website at MissionImmaculata.com to see what is involved. While on the site, I saw a booklet that looked similar to one I picked up from church at least a month ago.
I didn’t have time to read it when I first brought it home, so I set it on a small table which I walk by every day. It has a picture of the Blessed Mother with the words, “Behold Your Mother!”
So, I finally picked it up today and looked at it–the day I was planning to enroll, and saw that above those same words was “Militia of the Immaculata.”
It seems that while that booklet laid on the table, Mary was drawing me to its content via St. Maximilian Kolbe.
A coincidence? I don’t think so.
Supernatural? Yes, I think so.
