Scripture
Matthew 5:3
Revelation 7:2–4, 9–14; Psalm 24:1–6; 1 John 3:1–3; Matthew 5:1–12a
Sermon Week/Year
On October 10, 1982, an elderly Polish man stood among the thousands gathered in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. Pope John Paul II was about to declare a fellow countryman a saint. The man in the crowd had traveled there for a reason that few people could claim. Forty-one years earlier, the priest being honored had saved his life.
His name was Franciszek Gajowniczek. In 1941, he was a prisoner at Auschwitz, the Nazi concentration camp in occupied Poland. One day in July, after another prisoner escaped, the guards selected ten men to die of starvation as punishment.
Gajowniczek was one of them.
He pleaded for mercy. He had a wife and two sons. He wanted to live for them. Then another prisoner stepped out of the ranks and approached the guards.
He was a Franciscan priest named Maximilian Kolbe. He offered to take Gajowniczek’s place. The guards agreed, and Kolbe was led away with the other condemned men.
For two weeks, they…
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