Let me take your place

Have you ever heard of Maximilian Kolbe? I had not, until I read this piece by Ann Voskamp. Kolbe was known as the Christ of Auschwitz.

Maximillian Kolbe was the first man who had ever offered his life for another man in the history of Auschwitz.

He would be the only man.

The man who saw that a good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.

If Maximilian Kolbe could stand in Auschwitz and write “Be tranquil — because the good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love” — is there ever really anything that should make one lose tranquility? It could be like a song for all the doubters and anxious: The good God is everywhere and provides for everything with love.

A Christian who was known to give up his food rations to those less hungry than he was. A Christian known to give his blanket to those not as cold as he was. Maximilian Kolbe, he was known to these incarcerated Jews as the Christ of Auschwitz… and he steps forwards silently, takes off his cap, and before the commandant he says,

“Let me take his place. He has a wife and children. I am not married. I am not a father. He is young. I am old. Take me.”

And the man who survived Auschwitz Voskamp writes what he said:

“Because of Maximilian Kolbe, I can’t act frivolously — because every single moment is pregnant with meaning.

Because it was a gift to me from that one who died that I might breathe this breath, that I might act today, that I might embrace this moment — I could never take another moment for granted.”

Please read more at the link in the first paragraph of this post.