Maximilian-izing Indifference

Franciscan priest and martyr St. Maximilian Kolbe had much to overcome in his fruitful and dynamic life. Often regarded as the father of modern Catholic media he is the inspiration of much of Pope Saint John Paul II’s writing on the subject of the new evangelization.

But lets take a different angle today. This little saint from Dunska Wola began his journey to sanctity by answering a call to holiness that demanded of him an overcoming of the natural human tendency to gravity (theologically a concupiscence opposed to grace), a huge part of which is indifference.

Today we are so surrounded by blaze attitudes that we’ve become somewhat indifferent to the problem of indifference.

“The most deadly poison of our times is indifference. And this happens, although the praise of God should know no limits. Let us strive, therefore, to praise Him to the greatest extent of our powers”, writes Kolbe.

Why indifference?

Well because of its connection with fear, and fear is the loss of trust, especially in God’s promises. Fear grows in proportion to faithlessness and our world is filled with the echoes of fear, a reverberation of non serviam that has been with us since the garden. It echoes as well placed slogans.

Happiness is the absence of suffering.

Life is the absence of death, big or small.

You control your reality.

There is no law beyond do what thou wilt, or some such phrasing.

And on and on.

The ancillary to fear is indifference. And, this indifference manifests itself often in two ways.

The first is — be little and don’t stand out. This is not the be little maxim of St. Therese of Lisieux or Servant of God Catherine Doherty. Rather, it is what we could term, the minnow effect. If I make myself small, unnoticed, and spend my time hiding in the swirling watery-blue cloud of the many (think of BBC Nature’s voice, David Attenborough here) then I am safe, or safer. We hope our silence or minimization of “conflict” (aka Catholic action, or the rub that comes from just doing the right thing) in word and deed will keep us from the gaze and appetite of the enemy.

Well guess what?

Fr. Gabriele Amorth, one of the exorcists of Rome diocese, argues convincingly that the devil does the maximum he is allowed to do at any given moment; this in order to purify us and give us the opportunity to respond with a fiat.

So little minnow, you’re already engaged in the max battle with a sharky character, like it or not.

And while we were busy swimming in circles, wearing ourselves thin, did we forget that we were created for greatness?

That brings us to our second expression of indifference, tepidity, or lukewarmness which ends also in a mistrust of God.

There is a certain flavor of tepidity that comes from distraction (the lures of pleasure) and from comfort (the full belly). Hungry people tend to be motivated by necessity. Are we hungry for the Lord?

St. Maximilian gives us a page-perspective by his simple account of his arrival to Nagasaki in Memories of the past four years “Mugenzai no Seibo no Kishi” 5, 1934, pp. 130-131.

St. Maximilian Kolbe begins, “. . . on April 24, [1930] when by ship I arrived with two Brothers by “Nagasaki” to the port nagasacki – I asked myself: how will they receive me in Japan?

When I arrived by taxi to the church in Oura (which is now declared a National Monument), a large white statue of Our Lady with an inscription at the bottom of “Our Lady of Japan” seemed to be inviting to enter the church.

I was worn out with seasickness, but when I saw the figure, the weariness went away and I joyfully walked to the church.

For a week after my arrival I lived near the church in Oura and often looked at the white statue of Our Lady of Japan.”

What great trust St. Maximilian had to embark upon a grand missionary voyage despite the rumblings of an inter-war world. The suffering and the endurance for the Lord is the currency of heaven.

Such “difference” comes after the encounter with Our Lady who offered the young Raymond Kolbe a choice between the crown of purity or that of martyrdom. True to his character, he chose both.

That makes St. Maximilian Kolbe a great role model, especially to youth, is that he is a kind of antidote and intercessor when we are tempted to indifference or even to minimalism — give me all of it Lord, more challenges, more children, more stubborn parishioners, more grace, so that my small frame can make you Oh Jesus more manifest.

St. Max was a maximalist with a child-like reliance on his Risen Savoir and his Heavenly Mother. “To lead all men and every individual through Mary to the most Sacred Heart of Jesus” he would say.

So today, make a difference by overcoming the indifference which lives within and without you. That is the destiny of a true knight of Christ.

Love can do more.

St. Maximilian, pray for us!

Our Lady of Japan, pray for us!