She Offered Me Two Crowns

Father Maximilian Kolbe, born in Poland in a very poor but devout family, was quite a turbulent child until the day his mother cried out, "My poor child, what will become of you?" This question completely overwhelmed Maximilian. A turning point in Maximilian's life followed that he confessed to his mother: "I prayed so hard and asked the Holy Mother of God to tell me what I would become. Then she appeared to me, holding two crowns, one white and one red. She looked at me with love and offered them both to me. The white one represented that I would always be pure and the red one that I would be a martyr. I accepted both of them!" On February 17, 1941, the Gestapo arrested Father Maximilian Kolbe and four other brothers, and took them first to the Pawiak prison in Warsaw. The priest was severely beaten as a religious and a priest. He wrote to his congregation left in Niepokalanow: "The loving Immaculate Mother was always with us with her tenderness and will always watch over us. Let her guide us, more and more perfectly wherever she wants us to go and according to her good desire, fulfilling our duties until the end, so that we may save all souls out of love." A few days later, Father Kolbe was transferred to Auschwitz.