St. Maxmillian Kolbe
And the Militia of Mary Immaculate.
I dreamed of St. Maximilian this morning shortly before I was fully awake. The images played out in the dream recalled how, as a seminarian studying in Rome, the saint witnessed numerous anti-Catholic groups protesting outside of the Vatican, hurling insults against the Pope and blasphemies against Our Lord. The sight moved Kolbe to found the Militia of Mary Immaculate, and the insignia the Militia adopted was the Miraculous Medal of the Immaculate Conception. Providentially, the Militia was founded on 16 October 1917, just 3 days following the final apparition and the great miracle at Fatima.
St. Maximilian added to the prayer Our Lady instructed to be placed on the Miraculous Medal, and it goes like this:
“O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee, and for those who do not have recourse to thee, especially the enemies of the Church and those recommended to you. Amen” - Source
“Thou alone, Mary, hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”
When I was in grade school, I was enrolled in the Militia and became a knight of the Immaculata. Kolbe impressed me because of his great purity and devotion to the Immaculate Conception. Later as a novice in the monastery, to help me discern if I should remain with the Trappists or move on, the Novice Master made the unusual decision to send me to stay a few weeks with the Conventual Franciscans who operated the Marytown in the U.S. - at that time it was located in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I also spent a summer there working before entering the monastery. At any rate, this is my connection to that particular apostolate.
It seems to me in this country the enemies of the Church are perhaps more virulent than in Kolbe’s day, witness the so-called gay pride parades and celebrations, as well as dissident prayer services, which take place on or near Catholic properties; in my town, across the country, in Rome, and even in Jerusalem. The Pope and the bishops are represented as hate-filled criminals for affirming Catholic teaching regarding faith and morals, especially as it concerns the sin of homosexual behavior. Now, even more than ever, we need to have recourse to the Immaculata; “Thou alone, Mary, hast destroyed all heresies in the whole world.”
A comment on “gay pride”.(Taken from PP X’s encyclical against Modernism.)
Although they express their astonishment that We should number them amongst the enemies of the Church, no one will be reasonably surprised that We should do so, if, leaving out of account the internal disposition of the soul, of which God alone is the Judge, he considers their tenets, their manner of speech, and their action. Nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate. Moreover, they lay the ax not to the branches and shoots, but to the very root, that is, to the faith and its deepest fibers. And once having struck at this root of immortality, they proceed to diffuse poison through the whole tree, so that there is no part of Catholic truth which they leave untouched, none that they do not strive to corrupt. Further, none is more skillful, none more astute than they, in the employment of a thousand noxious devices; for they play the double part of rationalist and Catholic, and this so craftily that they easily lead the unwary into error; and as audacity is their chief characteristic, there is no conclusion of any kind from which they shrink or which they do not thrust forward with pertinacity and assurance To this must be added the fact, which indeed is well calculated to deceive souls, that they lead a life of the greatest activity, of assiduous and ardent application to every branch of learning, and that they possess, as a rule, a reputation for irreproachable morality. Finally, there is the fact which is all but fatal to the hope of cure that their very doctrines have given such a bent to their minds, that they disdain all authority and brook no restraint; and relying upon a false conscience, they attempt to ascribe to a love of truth that which is in reality the result of pride and obstinacy. - Pius X, Pascendi Dominici Gregis
[Of course the Holy Father was addressing the Modernist heresy in this encyclical, though I found much of what he said could just as well be addressed to those who promote the errors of the homosexual lifestyle.]
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