There are times when we have a fear that at any given moment we are not quite where we would like to be. We somehow feel distant from our true place in the world. We feel as though we are missing some very important or significant opportunity that is taking place elsewhere and by uncontrollable and pernicious circumstances we are prevented from being in that place where we would find fulfillment and happiness. We instead look at our situation as gloom and we think we are victims of fate.
That feeling, which I have often had, is nothing more than a lie and a temptation to despair. There are of course times where by our own lack of effort we fail to be where we ought to be, or fail to do what we ought to do. And there are times when circumstances prevent us from being where we would like to be. But, there is no place or circumstance in which despair is the inevitable human response. And in Christ there are no victims of fate, only opportunities of grace. Maximilian Kolbe taught us as much.
The Polish man who became a saint could not have foreseen where his life would lead him. He could not have known in his joyful childhood that he would one day find himself in the hell of Auschwitz. But in those circumstances, and in that dreadful, fearful, deadly, inhuman moment - which most of us have heard about but cannot even fathom - where he, with a starved and broken body, decided that it would be beneficial to him to offer up his life in order that a father who had been condemned to execution might live - those circumstances are likely not where Maximilian Kolbe wanted to be - but it is exactly where he knew he should be. And he believed that God's grace was present even there.
If I find myself despairing of my circumstance in life I try and think of the joy that Kolbe had in much worse circumstances. If I had been in that moment, would I have joy? Would I have courage, as he did? It is likely that I would not, since I now despond of circumstances that any Pole of the early twentieth century would have been overwhelmingly grateful for.
And so I cannot forget the memories during the first week of April, 2005 when I sat with the children and grandchildren, now adults, of many of those forgotten Poles. It was not at Auschwitz or Birkenau, or even in Krakow that I enjoyed their company. Rather, we found ourselves together on the Via della Conciliazione - the road leading to St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. The occasion for our chance meeting was the funeral Mass of the great Polish Pope John Paul II, who canonized Maximilian Kolbe in 1982.
The faces of these Polish people were severe - an indication that the story of their murdered countrymen had been passed along to successive generations with all its gravity. But they cheered with jubilation in memory of their Polish Pope. They even looked skeptically at me -the young, ignorant American - who at the time was still learning of the horrors inflicted upon that nation during WW II. Yet, when our group offered to say the Rosary with their group, alternating by bead from Polish Hail Marys to English, they accepted, some with smiles. And there on the doorsteps of St. Peter's, at the funeral Mass of one of the Church's greatest Popes, praying with some of the twentieth century's most suffered people, I could not help but realize that I was exactly where I was supposed to be - and I thanked God for the blessing of being alive.
I knew that moment would not last. And days, weeks, and now years have gone by, and the only memory of those moments with the Polish pilgrims is a small book of Polish prayers that one of them had given me. The circumstances of my life have changed and some of them are difficult - but none are without grace and so I must remain joyful. Perhaps somewhere in Poland there are pilgrims, sons and daughters of JP II, who remember me when they recite their Polish Hail Marys. I must return the favor of their prayers.
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