St. Maximilian Kolbe — The Saint at Auschwitz Who Traded Places With a Stranger

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When he was just 12 years old, a Polish boy
named Raymond knelt in front of a statue of

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Mary and asked her privately, what would become
of him? He said she appeared holding two crowns,

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one white, one red. The white one meant a pure
ordinary life. The red one meant martyrdom.

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She asked him which one he wanted. He said he
wanted both. 35 years later, in a starvation

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cell at Auschwitz, Both promises came due at
once.

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Hi, my name is John O'Connor and this is Everyday
Saints. This is episode 21. If you're new here,

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welcome to the porch. Pull up a chair, grab
a cup of coffee or a lemonade and stick around.

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We look at a new saint every single Thursday.
Quick thing before we get into it. Just this

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previous Tuesday, I dropped a special one. Why
do Catholics pray to saints? No saint story

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that day, just a straight answer to a question
a lot of people quietly have. If you missed

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it or forgot it happened, it's still sitting
right there in your feed. Definitely worth

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a listen. And I'd love to know your thoughts.
Well, you already know the setting for this

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one, even if you don't know the man. This is
the story of St. Maximilian Kolbe. Raymond

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Kolbe was born in January of 1894 in a small
Polish town called Zdarnska Wola, the second

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son of a weaver and a midwife. His mother, by
her own later account, was at her wits' end

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with him as a boy. Restless, strong-willed,
the kind of child who wears a parent thin.

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One day, she asked him, more out of exhaustion
than anything else, what was going to become

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of him? That question is what sent him to pray
in front of that statue of Mary. The vision

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of the two crowns is the answer he came back
with. He joined the Franciscans as a teenager.

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And when he formally entered religious training
at 16, he traded the name of Raymond for a

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new one, Maximilian. He studied first in Poland
and then in Rome. And this is the part that

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tends to surprise people, earned two separate
doctorates, both in philosophy and theology,

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while he was still a young man. In the summer
of 1917, still a seminary student, he founded

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an organization in Rome built around using every
modern tool available to spread honor for Mary.

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The thinking behind it was almost military.
An army of ordinary Catholics, organized and

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equipped, competing for the hearts and minds
the same way any other movement of that era

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was learning to compete. That instinct is part
of why printing presses and radio waves would

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make so much sense to him later on. He was ordained
a priest the following year and came home to

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Poland to teach. He didn't want a quiet classroom
though. He wanted to reach as many people as

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possible, as fast as possible, with as much
of his faith as he could get into their hands.

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In 1922, he started a small monthly magazine
with a first print run of about 5,000 copies.

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Five years later, in 1927, he founded a monastery
outside Warsaw. to house it and turn the whole

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operation into something nobody expected a monastery
to be. That little 5,000 copy magazine grew

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right along with it. In 1930, Kobe took the
whole operation overseas, founding a sister

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mission in Nagasaki, Japan, and publishing a
Japanese language edition of the same magazine.

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Back home in 1935, he added a daily newspaper
on top of it, one that was moving well over

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100,000 copies on a weekday and more than double
that on Sundays. By the outbreak of World War

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II in 1939, that monastery, Niepokolanów,
had grown into the largest Catholic religious

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community in the world. Nearly 800 friars and
candidates lived and worked there, and the

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magazine alone had reached a circulation of
roughly 750,000 copies a month, the highest

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of any publication in Poland. religious or secular.
This wasn't a side project bolted onto a monastery.

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Niamh Pokhlaanuf was the media operation,
decades before anyone would have used a phrase

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like that for a religious order, complete with
its own printing presses and its own amateur

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radio station. Then Germany invaded Poland in
1939 and everything he'd built became a target.

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The Nazis arrested him. and the other friars
within weeks of the invasion, though they were

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released that December. Kolbe kept publishing
anyway. Coming home, he turned the monastery

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into a shelter for roughly 3,000 displaced people,
about 2,000 of them Jewish families hiding

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from the Nazis, and his presses kept running
material the occupying government did not want

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circulating. Now, that combination, hiding refugees
and refusing to stop printing is what got him

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arrested again in February of 1941, this time
for good. He was sent first to a prison in

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Warsaw, held there for over three months, and
then transferred to Auschwitz that May. He

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was given a number now instead of a name, 16670.
Camp Life at Auschwitz was built to strip away

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everything about a person except that number.
Kolbe, weakened and sick, worked and suffered

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like every other prisoner there. At one point,
beaten badly by a guard for simply being a

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priest, and then quietly nursed back to health
afterward by fellow prisoners who hid him to

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do it. In late July of 1941, a prisoner disappeared
from Colby's barracks. Camp policy for an escape

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was brutal and deliberately public. The camp's
roll call commander, a man named Carl Fritsch,

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walked the assembled prisoners row by row and
pointed at men one at a time, choosing 10 of

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them at random to be locked in an underground
bunker and starved to death. A public warning

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to everyone watching. One of the men he pointed
to was a Polish army sergeant named Franczyszek

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Gajów-Naczek. When his number was called, he
didn't stay silent the way most condemned men

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in that camp had learned to. He cried out, he
had a wife, he had two sons. He would never

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see any of them again. For a moment, nobody
in that yard moved. Stepping out of line in

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front of an armed SS guard, uninvited, was the
kind of thing that could get a man shot on

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the spot, no explanation required. Colby stepped
out of line anyway. Fritch demanded to know

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what this prisoner wanted. Colby answered in
plain, calm German. He was a Catholic priest.

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He had no wife and no children, and he was asking
to take this man's place. Fritch was surprised

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enough by the request that he paused before
answering at all. And then he agreed. Gajuvnicek

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was marched back into formation and by his own
later account, he barely had time to process

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what had just happened to him before it was
over. He could only thank Kolby with his eyes

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as the priest was led away with the other nine
men instead. Prisoners sent to that bunker

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weren't expected to keep any dignity at all
in their final days. A prisoner named Bruno

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Borgelwix was assigned to check on the cell
and eventually clear the bodies out. And after

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the war, he gave a very detailed account of
what he saw. He said the room had nothing in

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it but a bucket for waste. And that bucket,
he said, was always found completely dry. The

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men were drinking out of it to survive. What
Borgorovic's heard, though, was the part that

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stuck with him. instead of the screaming and
cursing he was used to from that bunker. This

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cell echoed with prayers and hymns, quieter
each day as the men grew weaker, but constant.

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Kobe, he said, never asked for anything and
never complained. When the other men were begging

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for water or breaking down in despair, Kobe
was the one calming them, encouraging them

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to hold on. Guards who looked in on the cell
reported the same strange thing. Kolbe kneeling

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or standing calmly in the middle of the room
looking back at them without fear when every

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other prisoner they had ever put in that bunker
had been curled up on the floor. Some of the

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SS men reportedly couldn't hold his gaze and
told him to look at the ground instead. After

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two weeks, six of the 10 men had died from starvation
and dehydration. Kolbe was one of the four

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still alive. The Nazis needed the cell cleared
for the next group. So a guard came in and

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killed the remaining men with an injection of
carboic acid. Kolbe was 47 years old. His

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body was cremated the very next day, August
15th, the same date the church celebrates as

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the feast of the assumption. That prisoner,
Gajudnicek, survived Auschwitz. He survived

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the rest of the war. He made it home to his
wife, Helena. Though his two sons had been

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killed in 1945 before the fighting in Poland
was even fully over. For the rest of his own

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long life, he carried the strange weight of
knowing that a stranger had died in the exact

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spot that was supposed to be his. Now, not guilt
by his own account, but a kind of debt he never

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stopped trying to repay. He spent decades traveling
and speaking about it as a lay missionary.

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making sure Colby's story didn't get forgotten.
In 1971, Pope Paul VI beatified Colby, the

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first formal step towards sainthood. But he
beatified him specifically as a confessor,

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the church's term for someone who lived an exceptionally
holy life without necessarily dying for the

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faith in the strict legal sense. Some church
officials had pushed for martyr. instead, but

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classic martyrdom requires dying specifically
because you were hated for your faith, and

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Colbe had technically volunteered to die in
place of a stranger out of charity rather than

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persecution. It wasn't a clean fit. Eleven years
later, Pope John Paul II overruled that technicality.

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At Colbe's canonization in 1982, he declared
him a saint and specifically a martyr calling

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him a martyr of charity. Gajudnicek was there
for both ceremonies, 11 years apart, watching

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the church argue its way to the same conclusion
he had reached the moment Kolbe stepped out

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of that line. Which means, in a strange way,
Kolbe ended up wearing both crowns exactly

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the way his childhood vision described. The
white crown, the confessor's crown, came first

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in 1971. The red one, The martyr came second
in 1982 after the church spent over a decade

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making sure it was getting the label right.
Gajudvicek lived until 1995 at 93 years old

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and was eventually laid to rest at Nijampokalanuf
itself, the same monastery Kolbe had built.

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All right, so let's play the truth or legend
game before we head back to the porch. Three

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claims about Kolbe. Some hold up. Some don't.
You decide. Claim number one. When Kolbe stepped

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forward to take Gajudinacek's place, he specifically
told the guard that Gajudinacek had a wife

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and children while he himself did not. Claim
number two. The vision of the two crowns, the

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one from his childhood, is confirmed in Kolbe's
own official church record as a verified historical

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event, the same way his arrest and death are
documented. Claim number three. The prisoner

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whose disappearance triggered the entire selection
was later found dead inside the camp itself,

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meaning the search that got 10 men condemned
had already become pointless before it even

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started. Got your guesses? All right, here we
go. Claim number one is true. This detail comes

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from multiple accounts close to the event,
including surviving witnesses. and it's one

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of the most consistently reported details of
the entire exchange. Claim number two is legend

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in the sense that matters for how we talk about
it honestly. It's a real story Colby told about

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his own life and the church treats it as a meaningful
piece of his own devotional biography, but

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it rests entirely on his own private account,
the same way any childhood vision does. It's

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not independently verified the way his arrest
records or camp documents are. And finally,

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claim number three is probably true, but I want
to be honest about the sourcing here instead

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of pretending it's airtight. It comes from a
single well-regarded source rather than multiple

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independent camp records the way Borgovic's
testimony does. So likely accurate, worth

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knowing, but held a little bit more loosely
than the rest of his story. Okay, back to the

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porch. And I will preface this by saying this
story sat with me differently than most that

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we've come across. So I keep thinking about
those two crowns and how long it took the church

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itself to agree on which one Kolbe was actually
wearing. Eleven years between confessor and

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martyr. Eleven years of very smart, very careful
people arguing about the correct label for

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something that, to everyone who was actually
there, I'm sure was never a question.

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That's actually where I think the real weight
of this story sits. Not in the grand gesture

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itself, but in how ordinary Kolbe made it sound
while doing something extraordinary. He didn't

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launch into a speech about sacrifice or heroism
when he stepped out of that line. He just stated

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a fact. That man over there has a family and
I do not. As if the math of it was simple.

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As if anyone in his position would have done
the same thing. Honestly, almost nobody would

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have. And not to throw shade in my own direction,
but I have very little confidence that in the

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matter of five seconds that I could make the
same decision that Kolbe did. And that's exactly

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the point. Most of us will never face a choice
on the scale Kolbe did, and I hope none of

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us ever do. But... There's a smaller version
of it that shows up more than we'd like to

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admit. And for most of us, it won't look like
anything like a starvation bunker. It'll look

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like letting a coworker take the credit for
something you both built. It'll look like staying

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quiet about what a sacrifice actually cost you
instead of making sure everyone knows. It'll

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look like letting someone else be right when
being right yourself would have felt so much

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better. None of that makes the news. None of
it gets a feast day. But it's the same shape

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of thing scaled down to a size the rest of us
can actually carry. A moment where stepping

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aside costs you something real and you have
to decide whether you are willing to pay it

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without making a whole production out of the
decision. You don't need a title from Rome

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to know which crown you are wearing in that
moment. You just need to notice it's being

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asked of you and do the next right thing anyway.
So, here's the question that I'm sitting with

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this week. Is there a moment coming up in your
life where you could quietly let someone else

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keep what they need, even the praise, and even
if it costs you something real? And could you

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do it without making it about you at all? Interesting.
It is now time for the closing prayer. Lord,

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thank you for Maximilian and for a love that
didn't need a formal ruling to be real. For

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anyone listening who's facing a smaller version
of that same choice right now, give them this

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kind of plain, quiet courage. And for anyone
who, like Gajownicek, who is still carrying

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the weight of a gift they never asked for, Let
them find peace in it, not guilt. Amen. St.

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Maximilian Kolbe is recognized as the patron
saint of drug addicts due to the lethal injection,

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political prisoners, families, journalists,
amateur radio operators, and the pro-life

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movement. His feast day is celebrated on August
14th, the anniversary of his death. Well,

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that is episode 21. this one stuck with you,
send it to somebody who needs to hear that

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ordinary people are capable of extraordinary
love. One more thing, that special episode

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I mentioned upfront seemed to land with some
of you, so I'm thinking about doing more of

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them. Not saint stories, just straight answers
to the kind of Catholic questions people ask,

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but don't always ask out loud. If there's one
you've been sitting on, send it my way. Check

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the description of this show on how to contact
me directly. And next week, we are back to

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an unknown saint. And no hint this week as I'm
still researching which saint I am going to

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do it on. So check in next week to find out.
I'm John O'Connor. Thanks for sitting on the

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porch with me and I will see you next week.