Let Yourself Be Led by the Immaculate

by Maximilian Kolbe

True Devotion to Mary according to St. Maximilian Kolbe in his very own words. Compiled and translated by a Dominican Friar.

Everyone has heard of St. Maximilian Kolbe, but few know who he really is. Offering his life for another was simply the crowning end to a life lived in service of the Immaculate, and in this short collection of his words, he teaches us how to truly desire and obtain that same love which burned in his heart.

Pulling from numerous sources, all taken from St. Maximilian Kolbe's own words, this little book considers:
Prayer
The Mediation of Mary
Our Lives as an Instrument in Her Hands
The Divine Will and Our Own Will
Obedience
The Practice of Marian Devotion
Overcoming Discouragement
Peace of Soul
Childlike Devotion to Mary
Becoming Mary
Missionary Zeal
If you are looking for a source of meditation on Mary, and a book that will help you to become closer to her Immaculate Heart, then this is it.

You will return to this book again and again to help bring a Marian focus to your daily life, using the words of this saint to truly fall in love with Mary, and to take up her standard as your own. The modern world finds Mary and devotion to Mary to be uncomfortable. St. Maximilian Kolbe, in this short collection, shows that there is no other way to please God but through this total devotion to Mary.

Genres: Spirituality, Catholic

69 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 28, 2013

About the author

St. Maximilian was born Raymond Kolbe in Poland, January 8, 1894. In 1910, he entered the Conventual Franciscan Order. He was sent to study in Rome where he was ordained a priest in 1918.

Father Maximilian returned to Poland in 1919 and began spreading his Militia of the Immaculata movement of Marian consecration (whose members are also called MIs), which he founded on October 16, 1917. In 1927, he established an evangelization center near Warsaw called Niepokalanów, the "City of the Immaculate." By 1939, the City had expanded from eighteen friars to nearly 900, making it the largest Catholic religious house in the world.

To better "win the world for the Immaculata," the friars utilized the most modern printing and administrative techniques. This enabled them to publish countless catechetical and devotional tracts, a daily newspaper with a circulation of 230,000 and a monthly magazine with a circulation of over one million. Maximilian started a radio station and planned to build a motion picture studio--he was a true "apostle of the mass media." He established a City of the Immaculata in Nagasaki, Japan, in 1930, and envisioned missionary centers worldwide.

Maximilian was a ground-breaking theologian. His insights into the Immaculate Conception anticipated the Marian theology of the Second Vatican Council and further developed the Church's understanding of Mary as "Mediatrix" of all the graces of the Trinity, and as "Advocate" for God's people.

In 1941, the Nazis imprisoned Father Maximilian in the Auschwitz death camp. There he offered his life for another prisoner and was condemned to slow death in a starvation bunker. On August 14, 1941, his impatient captors ended his life with a fatal injection. Pope John Paul II canonized Maximilian as a "Martyr of Charity" and “Patron Saint of our difficult century” in 1982. St. Maximilian Kolbe is the patron of journalists, families, prisoners, the pro-life movement and the chemically addicted.

Reviews

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way Up is the way Down.
- Herakleitos

I’ve been inflammatory towards some powerful folks I knew, like Saint Maximillian - but for a radically different reason. I’m no saint. But, alas, I am bipolar, and can’t contain myself! Heaven help me. My first stop in hospital in the seventies was a wake-up call that eventually led to the Church.

But Kolbe WAS a saint. And he may have helped turned the tide of good German Catholics’ opinion against Hitler. That’s saying a LOT.

This book is for all those believers out there who need a shot of selfless vitality to boost their sagging faith!

And if you fear the loneliness of the spiritual quest, this book’s especially good for alienated Catholics.

For the only thing remotely lonely about walking the Christian road is losing the noisy company of our familiar devils: the same devils that provide us with so much social fun and entertainment... Need I mention my own bipolar devils?

Faith enchains them all. Good riddance!

Is losing ‘em all so bad?

I don’t think so...

And, as we all know, this new road goes on forever... and, though breaking old habits is tough - believe me - there’s a far more comforting reward at the end of our quest than we’ll EVER find in this paltry and cynical world.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe, murdered at Auschwitz, can teach us some secrets of this lesser travelled road that will yield enormous dividends for our peace of mind.

Secrets that are no secret to anyone, but are so seldom made use of. But they will be useless to us, if we ignore them.

So how DID he so easily and so graciously offer up his life as a substitute - for a Jewish man who had been randomly selected for execution by the bloodthirsty Nazi camp commandants?

Well, his life simply meant little next to that far greater reward his Christian faith promised, and helping a poor unfortunate.

And his faith in that promise had been refined to an adamantine polish by so many years of exhorting his fellow Poles to a peaceful, nonviolent embrace of faithful joy in the face of Nazi brutality.

And, yes - that was the “crime” for which he, this simple follower of Saint Francis, was murdered.

Have you read the incredible One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch in your travels through life? When I read it as a teen it threw the stark reality of such mass social ‘experiments’ as Nazism, Stalinism and the Khmer Rouge into brutal bas-relief.

For less than a century back from our comforting modern ways, if you happened to fall - randomly and stripped of any personal rights - beneath the cracks of ANY of these hideous régimes, you were TOAST, my friend.

No ifs, ands or buts!

Now the incredible fact of those nightmarish times was that some folks had the guts to STAND UP for their faith, and DIE for it.

And the media barely whispered a trace of their stories...

And for us, too, if we want it - in these much more comfortable but every bit as uncertain times - the less travelled way patiently awaits, with all its enormous promises and pitfalls.

But its promises are as enormous as its penalties Only if we believe.

And it needs a lifetime of commitment from us.

But even for us penny-ante believers, just as for the fervent hero Maximillian Kolbe, the Truth will lead us Home!

Where we’ll be at last Forever SAFE.

[Friar Dismas · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's called a collection of saying of St. Maximilian M. Kolbe, but it reads more like a set of short conferences he did for his own brothers. It does give you a very good insight into his spirituality and the group he founded.

[Werner · Rating 5 out of 5]

This work serves as a potent force multiplier for one who desires a true devotion to Mary in the lineage of the great Marian saints like St. Bernard and St. Louis de Montfort. St. Maximilian has a sober, filial, and overwhelming love and dependence on the Immaculate Mother of God - which can be summed up in his personal title for her, "Mamusia." I emphasize overwhelming, as those who refuse to humble themselves before the most venerable Queen of Heaven will not understand the purity and practicality of the doctrines contained in this work.

This book transformed my Ignatian retreat, confirmed my resolve in becoming a member of the Militia Immaculatae, and is a continual consolation in times of desolation.

If you love, or want to love, or want to love better, the Immaculate Heart of Mary - Read this book!

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peaceful and informative

Classic wisdom of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Wonderful for reading and meditation. Some of the translation from Polish was less powerful than other translations. Overall a solid, organized compilation of Kolbe's writing on Mary.

[ShepherdsDelight · Rating 5 out of 5]

93/100 (= 5.5/6) ≈ 5 Stars

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Words of St. Maximilian Kolbe arranged very logically. Heights of sanctity in few words. With total emphasis on the title of the book!!