You Suggest: Retreat in Rome for entrepreneurs with Cardinal Müller

We were proud last year to help promote this fine event. Please consider and make your plans now:

We are honored to invite you to an unique event that StartupWithMax.com initiative is organizing together with the Business Association, a Polish-based Catholic business venture. Entrepreneurs from all over the world will meet in Rome in November to learn from Maximilian Maria Kolbe who, in our opinion, was a great example of a successful entrepreneur and manager. The International Max Retreat will take place for the second time, and this year's keynote speaker will be His Eminence Gerhard Cardinal Müller.

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Fatima, the Sun, the Black Banner and a Friar’s Prophecy: “We can bring you down and we will. ”

David Murgia

Il Segno di Giona

This illumination is taken from the Taymouth Hours, circa ARSH 1325.  (H/T to Ann Barnhardt for image)

Poland. At the end of the second decade of the 20^th century. A young, conventual, Franciscan Friar is seated at his desk trying to organize his thoughts. On the desk there is only a small image of Our Lady.  For some months now there has been talk of a “beautiful Lady” appearing to three little illiterate shepherds in Portugal. All the newspapers had reported it. They had reported the strange apparitions and the Miracle of the Sun, a prodigy previously foretold by the little shepherds.  

You Suggest: Retreat in Rome for entrepreneurs featuring Cardinal Burke

"Startup Na Maxa/Start Up With Max" is an initiative aimed at making St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe the patron saint of start-ups and entrepreneurs. Fr. Kolbe was a man whose resourcefulness and perseverance should be a model for all contemporary business people. Even in most difficult circumstances, he showed how important determination, pro-activity, enthusiasm and vision of future handlings are. Therefore it is our desire that entrepreneurs turn to St. Maximilian to invoke his intercession.

We associate St. Maximilian Kolbe mainly with his stripped garment and his death as a martyr. But he was also an outstanding businessman who created from scratch some buoyant institutions. We can truly try to imitate him -- he was a man who in his life took all opportunities that were available to him.

The initiative "Start Up With Max", together with the Conservative Business Network, is organizing November 12-16 in Rome a retreat for entrepreneurs, startuppers and managers. 

It was not a coincidence that we chose Rome as a venue for this retreat. Rome was where St. Maximilian studied and it is was where he was also ordained a priest. Moreover, it was where the idea of Miles Immaculatae started -- a magazine that has been published until this day.

In the framework of the retreat, we will be visiting the most important places related to the youth of St. Maximilian. We will be reflecting upon his teaching during the Holy Mass, the Way of the Cross and the Holy Rosary. We invite you to deepen your faith by means of participation in our event.

A part of the retreat will be delivered by His Eminence Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke.

For more information and for application please click here. 

Click "read more" for this post in Polish: 

In a religious wasteland - and words of encouragement from St. Maximilian Kolbe

The fact that the Church is of God and exists because of supernatural life, is today made to correspond  to an absolute prohibition of worrying about Her future in the world.

Nowadays, whoever dares express in public their disquiet about the destiny of the Bride of Christ in the world, is immediately assaulted by a mighty chorus of judging voices that cry: “How dare you be so pessimistic, the Church belongs to the Lord, it is not right for you to speak like this, She is never  going to be abandoned by God.”

In Catholic environments, you can hardly express anymore a realistic judgment about the situation in the Church.  Recently, for example, an inquiry by Cesnur*  [the Italian Center for Studies on New Religions] reveals that 70% of Italians are “a long way away from religion” and go to Church only for weddings and funerals.

We would like to add, that the majority of these occasional frequenters to the Church find themselves at weddings and funerals where God or Grace are not spoken of anymore, because the men and women who are marrying or have died are souls that are too busy being celebrated (by the community), with the result that not even at these sporadic events, Christianity is being presented.

So, if a man dares express great concern about the stability of Christianity in our lands, he is immediately branded with the label of pessimist and  a man of little faith.

We do not go along with this way of reasoning and of action (rather non-action) because the disaster is visible for all of us to see!

For sure, they will tell you that the few Christians that remain are infinitely more mature, more “adult” in the faith than those of the past. We have some doubt about this, seeing that the Christians in the past made society Christian, (whereas) the Christians of today do not produce anything, apart from giving moralistic support to a liberal, tired world which is not in the least Christian under any aspect whatsoever. The hour has come to say “stop” to this seeming tranquility, which denies the evident collapse of the presence of the Church in our lands.

This is a crisis without precedent:  no more believers and no more priests: it is a wasteland of Religion backslidden into neo-paganism smattered with a dash of natural religion which tranquilizes consciences at particular moments in life – and nothing more.

Is it against the virtue of Hope to speak thus? No, we do not think so!

Suffering because of the pitiful situation in the Church does not mean we do not believe in the  intervention of God, Who from the wreckage of our sin is able to resurrect Christianity. On the contrary, it is the  responsibility of the Christian, first the priests and then the faithful, to record  the unhappy moment and invoke the mercy of the Lord upon His Church – and all of  us.

Every serious amendment to life starts with this realism: look at where you have ended up  forgetting God, and then with His Grace, convert!  This is true for the life of an individual, but it is also true for the entire life of the Church.

 All  of the souls who have loved God and the Church, His Bride, have done so. The saints have done so. We would also like to do so: uniting and not dividing, facing up to the dramatic state of affairs in the Church, with unshakeable faith in the Power of God’s Grace, Who will not abandon humble penitents.

In this bulletin, we would like to offer some short passages about the history of the Church, published in the 1920s in “ The Knight of the Immaculata” by Father Maximilian Kolbe – a true saint, a Franciscan in love with the Immaculata. Here he writes about the History of the Church confronted dramatically with the evil which besieges Her, but in writing this, he expresses unshakable trust in Her perennity through the Grace of God.

This is the only truly Catholic way of proceeding with the present situation in the life of the Church, taking to heart Her destiny in a responsible way. Even if She is in the hands of God, She is also entrusted to our Christian responsibility  –  first the priests and then the faithful.

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The Church of Christ confronted with Her enemies

From the writings of Saint Maximilian Kolbe.

Kolbe -70 III - August 14, 1941

Several days of confinement had not broken Father Kolbe: on August 14, 1941, on the Vigil of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his captors ended his life with a lethal injection. They thought they were crushing him for all eternity - as the instruments of his martyrdom, they were delivering him to the protection of his Most Holy and Immaculate Queen, the Immaculata Conceptio and Assumpta, who was ready to present him to her Son, as a witness, as a priest, as a servant, for a life of eternal glory and praise.

On the Feast of the Assumption, his earthly remains would be incinerated - the Assumption, the most ancient of Marian feasts, had been a part of his life from the beginning. On the day of his birth, January 8, 1894, he had been baptized, as Rajmund, in his parish church, the Church of the Assumption. The Assumption, the moment in which the Queen of Martyrs, that totality of heavenly love on earth (see below), completes the earthly journey that had begun with her Immaculate Conception and enters the Glory of love - that was the moment chosen by the Lord from all eternity for the reception of his blessed soul. 

Sancte Maximiliane, ora pro nobis!

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Since human words are incapable of expressing Divine realities, it follows that these words, "Immaculate" and "Conception", must be understood in a much more profound, much more beautiful and sublime meaning than usual: a meaning beyond that which human reason at its most penetrating commonly gives to them.

...

Who then are you, O Immaculate Conception?

Kolbe -70II -Kolbe and the Contemplative Life: Mea nox obscurum non habet,sed omnia in luce clarescunt

By August 10, 1941, feast of the Spanish-born martyr Lawrence, one of the greatest glories of the Church of Rome, Father Maximilian Kolbe had already been placed in his isolated cell, waiting for the slow death planned by his captors. As Saint Lawrence so many centuries earlier, that was his cross - he would not be running away from it.

What gave Kolbe so much strength? A well cultivated interior life, under the protection of the Immaculata, the same loving face that Christ saw from the Cross. As Lawrence, Kolbe could proclaim confidently in his trials, "My night has no darkness, but all things break forth in light."

Our newest contributor, Francesca Romana, sent us the following text for the 70th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint M. Kolbe.

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The Contemplative Life in the Martyr of Auschwitz

During his stay in Rome, St. Maximilian witnessed the raging hatred of the enemies of God and of the Church.  Inspired by Divine Grace and with unlimited confidence in the Holy Virgin, he founded the Militia of the Immaculate, conceived as an army of souls occupied in the fight for one’s own sanctification and that of others and for the conversion of the enemies of the Church, especially the Freemasons.

On September 5, 1911, Fra Maximilian made his simple profession and was sent to the Franciscan seminary in Cracow to continue his high school studies. 

Kolbe - 70 I - The prince

On August 14, 1941, the vigil of the Feast of the Assumption of Our Lady, the gentle deeply green and fertile plains near the Vistula and the Sola would witness another death - that of a man, number 16670 in the facility, who was, as he identified himself, "a Catholic priest". Neither half-German nor half-Polish - this priest belonged entirely to the Immaculata.

We now post what we hope will be the first of several contributions sent by our readers on the life and passion of Saint Maximilian Maria Kolbe.

The Prince of Auschwitz

(M. Ortiz)

Amid the smoke-filled, foul air of Auschwitz, the light of Divine charity shone with incandescent splendor in the heart of Saint Maximilan Kolbe. He took the words of the Credo, that his father in heaven was “omnipotentem” with the absolute seriousness that only those who love understand.

The Holy Spirit and the Blessed Virgin: the summit of love

Let me remind you again of the dependence shown by the three divine Persons on our Blessed Lady. Theirs is the example which fully justifies our dependence on her. The Father gave and still gives his Son only through her. He raises children for himself only through her. He dispenses his graces to us only through her. God the Son was prepared for mankind in general by her alone. Mary, in union with the Holy Spirit, still conceives him and brings him forth daily. It is through her alone that the Son distributes his merits and virtues. The Holy Spirit formed Jesus only through her, and he forms the members of the Mystical Body and dispenses his gifts and his favours through her.

Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort
True Devotion to the Blessed Virgin

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The Chapel of the Holy Rosary in the Conventual Church of the Dominicans in the historic city center of Puebla de los Ángeles, Mexico, one of the most majestic works of Catholic art in the Americas, is crowned by a simple, innocent figure: a dove. Surrounding it, a message to all visitors: Spiritus Domini requiescet super Eam.

She (...eam) is the Woman whose life was surrounded by the joy of the Holy Spirit from (Immaculate) Conception to Assumption, the one whose mystical union with the Paraclete was so intense that she had to be present in the miraculous day of Pentecost as a Spiritual Teacher, as the one who, by her example, by her own self, could show to those privileged pillars of the Church the Glory of the Risen Son through the action of the Consoling Spirit.

In this last week of May, the week of the Feast of the Queenship of the Blessed Virgin (which will not be liturgically celebrated, due to the privileged Octave of Pentecost), let us remember the intimate union of the Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin, in the powerful words of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, which are always worth repeating:

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Who is the Father? What is His personal life like? It consists in begetting, eternally because He begets His Son from the beginning and forever.

Who is the Son? He is the Begotten-One, because from the beginning and for all eternity He is begotten by the Father.

And Who is the Holy Spirit? The flowering of the love of the Father and the Son. If the fruit of created is a created conception, then the fruit of Divine love, that prototype of all created love, is necessarily a Divine "conception." The Holy Spirit is, therefore, the "uncreated, eternal conception," the prototype of all the conceptions that multiply life throughout the whole universe.

The Father begets; the Son is begotten; the Spirit is the "conception" that springs from their love; there we have the intimate life of the Three Persons by which They can be distinguished from one another. But They are united in the Oneness of Their Nature, of Their Divine existence. The Spirit is, then, this thrice holy "conception," this infinitely holy Immaculate Conception . . .

The creature most completely filled with this love, filled with God Himself, was the Immaculata, who never contacted the slightest stain of sin, who never departed in the least from God's will. United to the Holy Spirit as His spouse, she is one with God in an incomparably more perfect way than can be predicated of any other creature.

What sort of Union is this? It is above all an interior union, a union of her essence with the "essence" of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit dwells in her; lives in her. This was true from the first instance of her existence. It was always true and it will always be true.

And in what does this life of the Spirit in Mary consist? He Himself is uncreated Love in her; the Love of the Father and of the Son, the Love by which God loves Himself, the very love of the Most Holy Trinity. She is a fruitful Love, a "Conception." Among creatures made in God's image, the union brought about by married love is the most intimate of all. In a much more precise, more interior, more essential manner, the Holy Spirit lives in the soul of the Immaculata, in the depths of her very being. He makes her fruitful, from the very first instance of her existence, all during her life, and for all eternity.

This eternal "Immaculate Conception" [which is the Holy Spirit] produces in an immaculate manner Divine life itself in the womb or depths of Mary's soul, making her the Immaculate Conception, the human Immaculate Conception. And the virginal womb of Mary's body is kept sacred for Him; there He conceives in time the human life of the Man-God.

And so the return to God [which is love], that is to say the equal and contrary reaction, follows a different path from that found in creation. The path of creation goes from the Father through the Son and by the Holy Spirit; this return trail goes from the Spirit through the Son back to the Father; in other words, by the Spirit the Son becomes incarnate in the womb of the Immaculata; and through this Son love returns to the Father.

And she, the Immaculata, grafted into the Love of the Blessed Trinity, becomes from the first moment of her existence and forever afterwards the "complement of the Blessed Trinity." In the Holy Spirit's union with Mary we observe more than the love of two beings... . . . . in this union Heaven and earth are joined; all of Heaven with the earth, the totality of eternal love with the totality of created love. It is truly the summit of love.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe